Vega Final Focusing Takahashi 180 ED Collimation Project (Jerry Yesavage)

Vega Final Focusing Takahashi 180 ED Collimation Project

For those of you that have suffered along with me the collimation of my Takahashi 180 ED, I thought I should post one more technical shot (if anyone every searches on the topic they will find this).

So, how come this scope is so hard to get in collimation and focus, well because it is F/2.8. Remember, as I have relearned, that the F ratio in addition to defining aperture width defines depth of field. This can be calculated:

2.8*2.8*2.2 or 17.248 microns or 0.017248 mm or 0.0006791”… in other words the depth of field for critical focus is about 1/100th of a mm, way less than a mil.

From Wikipedia: A human hair is only anywhere from 40 to 120 microns thick.

I gave up on the Bahtinov mask and eventually chose a bright star with its own spikes. This was the problem in the images... spikes would not be symmetrical... could not get the whole image into that tiny plane. I could use this to get the imaging into the very narrow plane.

Anyway, I publish this here for future references.

I am not going to move the settings on the scope. Thanks to the folks from SBIG, Takahashi USA and Hotech lasers.

Cloudy Nights

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Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	339571
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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