Collimating a Newtonian Reliably and Scientifically Incorporating the Cave and Laser Telescope Collimators

Completed in 2014, the journey from adjusting both mirrors at every session for 5 years to just the primary mirror twice a year has been very rewarding, mainly by eventually regarding the Newtonian 'telescope's 45° secondary mirror lateral adjusters as handlebars. Turning them without laying a bike over causes the rider to fall off by inertia. Similarly, adjusting these two bolts results only in distortion of a different shape. Attempts to compensation then follow, whereas the instructions chapter from the 3rd edition keeps one well clear of getting nowhere with fast optics.     Support by like minds was found subsequently in Norton's Star Atlas* 11th to 15th editions from 1950 p.50. Then on the internet from around the millennium there's the metalwork of R.F. (Bob) Royce in 'The Ultimate Newtonian,' Conrad Hoffman's secondary mirror 'Taming the dastardly thing,' and in Sky & Telescope Oct. 2010 you'll find Ed Jones's Tracking Travelscope also preventing falling into wrong instructions. They either don't fit the lateral bolts or they lock them into strictly following the axial one, thereby steering instructions into the procedure I have developed independently without metalwork.
     There is nothing axial rotation doesn't perform far more accurately and easily for both low and especially high magnification interests. Adjustment feels micrometre-like with none of the hit or miss that can be endless in the persisting wrong written to look easy advice of fiddling with all the bolts that causes 'Maybe, occasionally and sometimes' to sprinkle most august intuitive approaches. Few have scaled up to the needs of better and faster optics, hardly deviating from what works for the Cassegrain. The instructions developed in this book also put one right on course for correction of the equatorial mount and gyro compass and vice versa where I hail from.   

    One of the various tools for aiding initial alignment can be all that is needed for slow optics and low magnification use. They include the Cheshire Eyepiece, the fascinating Easy Tester 11 and there's a computer program for completing the indoor centring. A Fuji 35 mm film canister does it with a wider and clearer view. Where is the laser collimator? The good news is any laser collimator axial beam when proven accurate by rotating it and used in accordance with these instructions, takes over for the secondary mirror when your black art no longer sets the vertical angle accurately enough – spot on the horizontal axis that before the star test with the Jet Stream somewhere else, only a laser collimator can show. Simple. Enjoy.
   In the event of reliability still remaining elusive, take out the primary mirror and check it's mountings. For some old glued on ones, you should look to the adhesive having failed.

    *..and Reference Handbook by his friend, James Gall Inglis (1864-1939) of Edinburgh. Gall & Inglis were Edinburgh & London publishers of easy access astronomy books to 1960.                                                                                                                                                   

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