Your spider vanes will cause some spikes but if it's not those kind it could be coma or a collimation problem; it's possible your mirror is stressed [not mounted in the cell right. Did you take your telescope all apart and put it back together when you got it- that's what i always do with newts to make sure it was put together right. Factories- no matter what company they are can have the tendency to slap things together in the name of the almighty bottomline] or even just not temperature stabilitzed at the time.

From what i can remember, M57 even at about 60x should look like a definitely doughnutty-shaped reddish little ovally-thing [and about the size of the diffraction rings on an O-O-F star?].

• one sided spikes - motlow - September 5, 2003 - 04:34 UTC
  • Collimation needed - jkoptic - September 5, 2003 - 15:20 UTC