Re: Toy telescope upgrades possible?

Billy no mates wrote: 
After my forays into astrophotography I thought thatkeeping the boy
off my back, sorry, interesting him, might help. Santa brought him a
baby reflector, 80mm x 700mm to be more precise, on special offer at
Jessops for GBP40.


Not at all familiar with this scope, so all below is generic.

Moving on I have read about collimation and so decided that it might
benifit from a bit of tweaking. (see test for whether or not you are a
man below) After taking the mirror end off I can look don at it and
see that the mirror is not pointing straight out of the mount, which
seems odd. Has anybody had cause to attempt adjustment on one of
these?


It does sound as if it needs collimated.

The end cap fixes in with three self tapping screws through the tin
tube. The mirror is fixed onto a plastic boss with clips. The boss is
aimed by three screws or threaded rods with springs on

From this description, these three screws are likely the collimation adjusters. Can you access them to turn them? Unclear from what follows.

and held off
the end cap by a central protrusion which is a projection of another
lump of plastic that sticks through the end cap. This lump can be seen
from outside the telescope and appears like a disc about 60mm diameter
with two holes at the edge, like it needs a pin spanner or similar to
turn it.

The central protrusion sounds like a pivot point. If so, I'm not sure you want to turn it, but adjust the three screws instead.

I tried, initially to unscrew this as I thought it would allow access
to the aiming screws, however it turns but doesnt seem to come out at
all.


This part is puzzling.

If you remove the end cap above, does the entire mirror assembly come out?

Usually the collimation screws extend out the rear of the scope and are adjustable without any disassembly (which would defeat the whole purpose).

It *could be* that this scope is intended to be crudely collimated in the factory and then never again by the user: Dunno.

Phil
.

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