9/13/2023 0 Comments Using bushnell telescope(This moves the dust from the eyepiece to your lungs, but every astronomer knows which is more important.) The job takes about one second. The quick and easy way to dust eyepieces is to lay a finger across the eye end (without touching the glass!) and suck air under your finger past the lens. Don't blow or you'll leave droplets of spit. To remove dust from an eyepiece lens, suck air as hard as you can between a finger and the lens. So clean your telescope optics rarely.īut if things on your telescope optics get really bad and you decide a cleaning has to be done, here’s how. A few sleeks don’t matter, but a lot of them will. Cleaning causes tiny scratches, or sleeks, if you don’t do it right, and maybe even if you do. A dirty lens or mirror can always be made clean, but a scratched one is scratched forever. There’s a good reason to ignore dirt, aside from reducing the things to worry about in life. “All mirrors fail such a harsh inspection.” After you’ve done what you can to prevent dust, ignore it. “Don’t decide to clean mirrors on the basis of shining a light down the tube at night,” advises Suiter. That’s quite a lot of crud to have no effect at all. His conclusion? “The maximum amount of dirt should tolerate on the telescope optics is about 1/1000 of the surface area, the size of a single obstruction about 1/30 of the diameter.” In other words, on a 10-inch-diameter telescope mirror you can have as much dirt as in a completely opaque blot a third of an inch across. In his book Star Testing Astronomical Telescopes, Harold Richard Suiter analyzes the effects of dirty, telescope optics in full mathematical detail. Dirt happens, and in moderate amounts it has amazingly little effect on performance. If you do leave a fingerprint on, say, a binocular lens, clean it off using the method described below. The acids in skin oil can attack optical coatings over time. Never touch the surface of a lens or mirror. Telescope retailers sell cheap, durable cases to store and protect eyepieces. Eyepieces should be capped on both ends or kept in plastic bags or small plastic food containers. That way dust won’t settle on them in storage. I store my two reflectors with their main and secondary mirrors both facing somewhat down. As for the eyepiece holder, a plastic canister for 35-mm film fits the standard 1¼-inch focuser size. If it’s missing a cap, make your own a shower cap, or a plastic bag or dishcloth held over the front of the tube by a rubber band, works fine. Keep the lens caps on when the instrument is not in use. The first tactic against dirt is defensive, and this is when you should be vigilant. The right attitude toward telescope optics means knowing when to be vigilant and when to relax. Dirt on lenses or mirrors scatters light, making dark skies less dark and bright objects less crisp - but not nearly as much as you probably think. Then again, life is full of imperfections, and there’s no point fretting about them. Much of the time you’ll be using it right at the limit of its capabilities, and when you’re trying to see very faint objects or fine detail, little things make a big difference. When cleaning lenses and mirrors, the most important rule is the doctor's Hippocratic Oath: "First, do no harm."Īny telescope or binocular that you use for astronomy, no matter how humble it may be, deserves the best care you can give it including the cleaning of telescope optics.
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