optics – Jonathan Gazeley

Pinched optics – the cure

If you’ve been following my geeky astronomical posts lately, you’ll see that my new telescope suffers from triangular stars, caused by pinched optics. I’ve also been posting about the problem on Astronomy Forum. Just to recap, the telescope currently produces pictures like this. The effect is subtle, but if you click on the picture toContinue reading “Pinched optics – the cure”

Pinched optics

I’ve been having an ongoing problem since buying my telescope a couple of months ago. Stars appear triangular, as you can see in this picture of Pleiades. I’ve done some research and it seems the most common cause of triangular stars is a defect called “pinched optics”. The primary mirror in is held in placeContinue reading “Pinched optics”