Takahashi collimator delivered – mini-WASP fine-tuning good to go

Nick Hudson (True Technology) visited the New Forest Observatory yesterday and brought with him an essential piece of kit for tuning up the mini-WASP array.  Yes – the thing that has been halting any further progress on mini-WASP commissioning has hopefully now been sorted with the arrival of a Takahashi collimator.  This collimator is very interesting, it is basically a Cheshire collimator with bells and whistles.  So on the end that you “look through” there is an adjustable eyepiece, this allows you to focus in on each of the “doughnut” reflections that you get off each glass surface in the lens cell.  I will now spend this weekend seeing if I can bring the Sky 90s into the tight collimation I know they are capable of.  With spot-on collimation the Sky 90 will cover an APS size chip and give good star shape (and size) right across the diagonal.  If collimation is even the tiniest bit out you will get coma in at least one corner of the chip.  Cheers Nick – you have rescued this (rather ambitious, meaning almost too much for me) project 🙂

 

 

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