I have one of these Chinese Scopes and so far I haven't been pleased with the quality of what I've been able to see of Saturn and it's rings. I e-mailed the seller and she sent me back detailed instructions on how to adjust the collimation and I've tried it but still not too much better, I've ordered a laser collimating device and will use it to re-adjust, I'll post a complete review once I've done that to let everyone know if it improved the capabilities of the scope any. I will say this though, the tripod that came with this scope is very flimsy, the only way I can get any stability is not to completely extend the legs, I leave them short and do my observing most of the time sitting down.
Using a laser collimator I was able to determine that this 6 inch Newtonian Explorer I purchased off e-bay had a tilted focuser that was causing some of the problem with correct collimation. After reading several articles about this I made some shims out of pieces of plastic cut from 35 mm Film cannisters and placed them under the focuser where it attached to the tube until it was lined up correctly with the secondary mirror . And then I was able to adjust the collimation precisely with the laser collimator, tonight I went out and set the scope up and allowed it to cool down sufficiently and lo and behold I was able to view Saturn much clearer than ever before, I was even able to make out 3 of Saturn's moons, that I had never seen before and some very subtle details of the planet itself, so these "Chinese" scopes can be made to perform better with a little tweaking and I'm not completely unhappy with purchasing it now, however I still wasn't able to use the 6.5mm high magnification EP it simply blurred things up but with the 25mm and 2x Barlow, Saturn was beautiful in the Georgia sky. Now I'm anxiously looking forward to the summer months when the warm weather will allow much longer viewing times  | 
08-14-2008, 03:29 AM
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