Photo courtesy of NASA
slightly altered, used with permission.

"The actual repair may take probably a few minutes. It's the preparation that's the difficult part."

Keith Cowing, Editor of NASA Watch
on doing repairs in space.

 

This section applies mainly to Newtonian and Dobsonian telescopes, but you will find a little here that applies to any telescope such as adding a Telrad, or cleaning eyepieces. Everything here is very easy to do. Some tips involve cleaning, some involve adjustments or fixes, and some involve add ons. The most difficult thing here would be cleaning a telescope mirror. It's really not difficult, probably delicate would be a better word, but don't let that scare you away from doing it.

I'll be adding more tips to this page later so be sure to check back. If you have any that you would like to share please email them to me. If I use them I'll put your name up with the tip as the provider. 

Email to: Astrohammer@comcast.net

 

Adding a Telrad

A Telrad is one of the better "red dot" type of finderscopes on the market today. They can be easily installed on most telescopes.

Cleaning Your Primary Mirror

Cleaning a Primary mirror is a simple, but delicate operation. A mirror has to get pretty dirty to affect performance, but when it does get that dirty, here's what to do.

Cleaning Your Eyepieces

Eyepieces tend to collect dust, oils from your eyelashes, and sometimes fingerprints. They are really simple to clean. Here's how.

Collimate Your Telescope

Collimation (allignment of the telescope's mirrors) is a simple process. It seems like a confusing task upon first looking at the directions, but after doing it once you will see that there's not much to it.
   
Smoother Azimuth Motions This tip is only for Dobsonion type telescopes that suffer from poor azimuth (side to side) motion.
   
Weight and Balance This tip is also for Dobsonian telescopes. Sometimes you start adding heavy accessories and have trouble with the telescope staying balanced. Here's a few tips on what to do.
 

 

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Latest revision 8/4/2006