I'm having an issue with collimating my scope and for the life of me I cant seem to figure it out.
Now I know the collimation basics, and procedures. The issue im facing is this, yesterday I had slight mis-collimation so i proceeded with doing a visually aided collimation on Capella.
After I was satisfied I slewed over to my target "The bubble nebula NGC 7635". My plate solving didn't work, when i looked at the screen the stars were all streaks. Now you might say its polar alignment or some other sort of error but my live screen is going at 300ms and high gain and the stars were actually small streaks.
I proceeded to do another collimation and it went all good until i went out of focus to the other side, I usually collimate by taking the star out of focus in one direction then confirming by taking it out of focus the other direction. What I'm consistently seeing is that one direction of focus is collimated the other is not. When i collimate on that direction the other goes out of collimation.
What am i missing here? Also seems like after the collimation the direction I'm pointed at is fine, but when i move to target the stars are streaks …. I was scratching my head all night and got so frustrated and went to sleep.
Below is an illustration of what I descried above (excuse my terrible art) , and a picture of Vega I took along time ago with another symptom ( though at that point I had no streaks issue)
Any insights on what the issue could be would be greatly appreciated.
Clear Skies


Now I know the collimation basics, and procedures. The issue im facing is this, yesterday I had slight mis-collimation so i proceeded with doing a visually aided collimation on Capella.
After I was satisfied I slewed over to my target "The bubble nebula NGC 7635". My plate solving didn't work, when i looked at the screen the stars were all streaks. Now you might say its polar alignment or some other sort of error but my live screen is going at 300ms and high gain and the stars were actually small streaks.
I proceeded to do another collimation and it went all good until i went out of focus to the other side, I usually collimate by taking the star out of focus in one direction then confirming by taking it out of focus the other direction. What I'm consistently seeing is that one direction of focus is collimated the other is not. When i collimate on that direction the other goes out of collimation.
What am i missing here? Also seems like after the collimation the direction I'm pointed at is fine, but when i move to target the stars are streaks …. I was scratching my head all night and got so frustrated and went to sleep.
Below is an illustration of what I descried above (excuse my terrible art) , and a picture of Vega I took along time ago with another symptom ( though at that point I had no streaks issue)
Any insights on what the issue could be would be greatly appreciated.
Clear Skies
