SCT Laser Collimator

www.digitecoptical.com/coll-sctlaser.htm

What do our SCT-lovers think?? Is it worth the dosh?

Michael,
When I saw the post at first, I was skeptical, but after reading the add, I'm impressed!
Pitty its so expensive, if a club was to buy one or if a number of people in a club was to buy one, then I'd probabily go for it.
We'll probabily see cheaper coppies of it soon enough anyway.

One thing to note is that you're colliminating without the diagonal. However, more and more diagonals can now be collimated. Therefore, once you collimate the optics, you could then collimate the diagonal.
It's something that would be useful but wouldn't need for every observing session. As you said, it's the kind of thing a few people could use and help cover the cost.
Another thing of course is that if you have the scope permanently set up on a wedge in an observatory, you'd need to take it off the wedge and place it somewhere where you can use a wall as a target for the collimation.

www.digitecoptical.com/coll-sctlaser.htm
What do our SCT-lovers think?? Is it worth the dosh?

Only if you've money burning a hole in your pocket! It only takes me a few minutes to accurately collimate my SCTs using a high power eyepiece and a star test, so personally I wouldn't be bothered buying such an expensive piece of equipment. SCTs are easy - you only have to collimate the secondary.

Gordon

Have to agree with Gordon. Anyway most SCTs go out of collimation when you even slew across the sky or move the tube any distance. So after you collimate then put the scope in the car and take to an observing site chances are it's gone out of collimation anyway. Thierry LeGault's method of collimation takes me about 15 mins to do now and that leaves the scope well set up for hi res planetary stuff.

DaveG

I use the webcam and the astrosnap to collimate the scope.
I dont think I'd buy this device, but I would borrow one