Damn kids

I was upstairs doing some study the other day and 'erself sticks her head in and says "by the way one of the girls (2 year old twins) took three screws out of your telescope - they're sitting on top of it". My response: "WTF!".

Ran downstairs to discover that the three screws were the ones holding the secondary mirror in place. She'd stopped them before they got to the fourth and final screw - that would have been a case of bye-bye primary mirror as the secondary crashed down on it from a height of 1m!

So I was lucky. But now it needs to be collimated again. Has anyone got a laser collimator I could borrow for a little while? I keep meaning to buy one but haven't got around to it yet :oops:

Sorry, can't help with the collimating, but I know where you're coming from with the kids. - That's classic.
I've four, the youngest is two and he is into everything. He has now managed to climb over the stair gate by pushing a heavy bench to the bottom of the stairs, gone up to my bedroom and opened the case I use to hold all my scope equipment. Thankfully I discovered him before he started sucking on my eyepieces, or poking holes in my solar filters, or hammering the Objective lens with a screwdriver (shiver!!!), I think the red LED torch kept him occupied long enough for me to discover him.

I've heard many stories regarding collimation but that takes the biscuit :lol: , I wouldnt be too worried about collimating, get it roughly centered by eye in daytime and work with it at night time using high power eyepieces.

Steve,
despite all that, I bet you're still smiling after it! No doubt you will see him in later years getting scopes and binos....





....and taknig them apart to try and build something bigger!

Seanie.

Has anyone got a laser collimator I could borrow for a little while?

Steve,

I have a laser collimator that I got recently but haven't used yet. (My kids haven't thought of attacking the secondary mirror screws; obviously less advanced than yours) You're welcome to borrow it, if you can arrange pickup in Dublin.

Seán

Thanks Sean. Johnno has one as well and I'll see him on Friday night so you'll just have to get your kids some destruction lessons