Rodrigo Roesch:
Olivier Constans:
Someday I'll learn how to collimate this thing, not today, but someday. Everything looked great inside, not so much now. I thought my defocused issues were just thermal since the scope had only been outside about 30 minutes when I checked, coma and astigmatism looked pretty good though. Now I have these ugly looking star shapes. I do like testing just how much blurX can fix.
I cropped off the guiding graph, but I'm at 0.4 to 0.5 tonight so I doubt that's causing my issue. 
I got this kind of star shape with my RC10 when the polar alignment is not perfectly ok ;)
Also I am using ocal to collimate the RCs (I have 10,8 and 6') it is working very whell but you also need to remove the primary baffle to have clear view of the spider and all the circle inside. Then just follow the tutorial ocal has done for collimation of a RC6 because it works for all size of tube. The only thing I do more is to adjust the tilt ring to center the black dot that remain not centered in the RC6 tutorial from ocal. After that I have nothing to touch , the residual tilt is less than 9%.
The picture below show a residual tilt before I adjust the tilt ring, the spider is not perfectly aligned
at the end you have something like this
Are the blue arrows indicating the separation between the primary and the tub? do you center that by using the focuser tilt plate? That is the part that looks off in my scope
Thank you The blue arrows indicate the view of the end of focuser tube. You have to 1st make the ocal concentric to that (green circle) by adjusting the offset. Once this is done it becomes the reference for all your adjustments. You also need to understand you are looking the secondary reflecting the primary,reflecting the secondary etc... focuser then ocal. Then understand 1st the secondary need to see the primary centered for that you adjust the primary, once it is done, the primary need to see the 2nd image of the secondary centered (where the circle red is visible) so you adjust the secondary (it will move a little the primary again so you do ajustment of the primary , then again secondary etc etc and finaly it comes all concentric but the middle circle and maybe the spider is a little bit missaligned . This is where at this end you need a tilt ring to do the final tunning of the focuser and readjust all the circle. On the secondary go very slowly because a very small movement of the screw is doing a large displacement of the circle.. You really need to be gentle with the collimation for fine adjustment.. Also when I do the collimation I 1st tigth all the primary miroir collimation screw in order to have the primary in his resting position against the primary support. You will see that in that position the miror is almost well positionned (I have observed that on each of my 3 RC) from factory. (unless you are unlucky and got a bad adjusted tube that can still be possible). This from is my experience with RC6,8 and 10 collimation. Not so difficult with ocal. this is the result on Eskima nebula field of view 
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I really enjoy that these threads turn into clinics on using the scope. I probably won't ever buy an Ocal for it, I already spent entirely too much on top of the actual cost of the OTA. The new focuser just cost another $250, at least the tilt plate was relatively cheap since I may not need it afterall.
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New focuser seems to be worth it, tilt is gone, stars are near perfect. I have the tilt plate removed, probably for good. My collimation could still be better, this was done with the DSI method and required quite a bit of adjustment from the mechanical collimation. All I had to do was reset the primary, and start from there.  |
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What focuser did you get?
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Hope you have resolved the issue. I had a similar model branded TS Optics. After months trying to collimate I finally noticed that the center mark on the secondary was not centered. It was of by a 1/4 inch. Anyone that struggles with this type of telescopes should double check this.
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Marcelo Cassese:
What focuser did you get? I just got the Apertura rack and pinion focuser from highpointscientific. If I ever decide to take the secondary out I'll check the center mark. It would make sense if it was off by some amount since my mechanical alignment is so far off from the star test.
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I think I have the same issue with the secondary mark being off. When is mechanically dead center , the shadow of the secondary is not concentric in relation to the star
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Rodrigo Roesch:
I think I have the same issue with the secondary mark being off. When is mechanically dead center , the shadow of the secondary is not concentric in relation to the star As you are in the collimation procedure, assuming it is no yet collimated , I would recommend , because it is easy to do (only 4 or 6 screw to remove) , to remove the end of RC ring that hold the secondary and spider and then check the position of the sticker , just to be sure it is set in the middle of the secondary and also check the secondary is well centered in the spider.
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Olivier Constans:
Rodrigo Roesch:
I think I have the same issue with the secondary mark being off. When is mechanically dead center , the shadow of the secondary is not concentric in relation to the star
As you are in the collimation procedure, assuming it is no yet collimated , I would recommend , because it is easy to do (only 4 or 6 screw to remove) , to remove the end of RC ring that hold the secondary and spider and then check the position of the sticker , just to be sure it is set in the middle of the secondary and also check the secondary is well centered in the spider. Well, my center mark is about 1/4 of an inch off on my Carbonstar RC8. You'd think putting a sticker in the center of a circle would be something that could be done without error. Weeks of frustration trying to collimate this thing have been because someone just didn't bother to put this sticker in the right place at the factory. I am glad I finally decided to check, but annoyed it had to be checked at the same time.
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Apertura unfortunately etched the glass instead of using a sticker for the donut, so I reached out to see if I can get a new secondary with an actual center mark, instead of an off center mark. My center check looks exactly where my Cheshire is centered on after DSI method collimation. I'm confident the mark was made in the wrong place at the factory.   |
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Not surprised others are finding that the secondary center mark is off. The quality control on these telescopes is lacking to say the least.
The hours people have lost trying to collimate these RC’s… Such a shame on the manufacturers and the resellers!
Please check your new telescopes before using them, you can’t trust anything mass produced these days. And ask more from the resellers, this is not ok…
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Not surprised others are finding that the secondary center mark is off. The quality control on these telescopes is lacking to say the least.
The hours people have lost trying to collimate these RC’s… Such a shame on the manufacturers and the resellers!
Please check your new telescopes before using them, you can’t trust anything mass produced these days. And ask more from the resellers, this is not ok… I agree, but I doubt Highpointscientific will do anything about it. I imagine they've already paid for the ones they have stocked and wouldn't want to take the loss or fight with Apertura to get them all fixed. It would be nice if they would check them before sending them out to customers. I'm hoping my warranty claim for manufacturing defect works out. It's crazy they decided to etch the glass though, when a 2 cent donut sticker would have worked just as well. It is very frustrating to have something so simple be the cause of so much difficulty. It tough to believe a major telescope manufacturer can't properly find the center of a circle.
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Apertura unfortunately etched the glass instead of using a sticker for the donut, so I reached out to see if I can get a new secondary with an actual center mark, instead of an off center mark. My center check looks exactly where my Cheshire is centered on after DSI method collimation. I'm confident the mark was made in the wrong place at the factory. Wow, I did some collimation using the cheshire ignoring the center mark and centering based of concentricity of the secondary in relation to the primary and then centering the secondary by making the reflection of the primary concentric to the tube. The position of the secondary mark is very similar as the one in your picture. Highpoint agreed to take the scope back and check it
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I have 3 RC : 2 TS-Optics (GSO rebranded ) the 6" and 10" and a kepler (pure GSO ) the 8", they have all the donut correctly centered.
I am particulary happy with the Ts-optics RC that are very good optically and mechanically.
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Rodrigo Roesch:
Apertura unfortunately etched the glass instead of using a sticker for the donut, so I reached out to see if I can get a new secondary with an actual center mark, instead of an off center mark. My center check looks exactly where my Cheshire is centered on after DSI method collimation. I'm confident the mark was made in the wrong place at the factory.
Wow, I did some collimation using the cheshire ignoring the center mark and centering based of concentricity of the secondary in relation to the primary and then centering the secondary by making the reflection of the primary concentric to the tube. The position of the secondary mark is very similar as the one in your picture. Highpoint agreed to take the scope back and check it Could not it be possible to simply place a sticker on top of the wrong sticker to correctly mark the center ? You ave enough space not used because of the central obstruction in the middle of the secondary to do that I think
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Rodrigo Roesch:
Apertura unfortunately etched the glass instead of using a sticker for the donut, so I reached out to see if I can get a new secondary with an actual center mark, instead of an off center mark. My center check looks exactly where my Cheshire is centered on after DSI method collimation. I'm confident the mark was made in the wrong place at the factory.
Wow, I did some collimation using the cheshire ignoring the center mark and centering based of concentricity of the secondary in relation to the primary and then centering the secondary by making the reflection of the primary concentric to the tube. The position of the secondary mark is very similar as the one in your picture. Highpoint agreed to take the scope back and check it I've had mine a few weeks longer than you I think, delivered on December 26th. I really can't stand the 30 day policies for returning to the sellers, especially in this hobby where you can't hardly even truly test out a scope in that short of time. The center mark is very obviously a manufacturing defect, but now I'm going to be going back and forth for months probably to try and get mine fixed since I'm passed the magical 30 day point. I've sent an updated review on the RC8 to address the off center secondary mark, hopefully highpointscientific will publish it, customers should know to be aware of the issue before they waste multiple nights of imaging assuming the scope is properly made.
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Yes, I got mine delivered on 12/30, so I am in the same boat claiming manufacturer warranty. The issue was when I noticed that something was wrong, I did not know exactly what it was and that took time and the 30 days return implied paying shipping back as well as 10% restocking fee
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Olivier Constans:
Rodrigo Roesch:
Apertura unfortunately etched the glass instead of using a sticker for the donut, so I reached out to see if I can get a new secondary with an actual center mark, instead of an off center mark. My center check looks exactly where my Cheshire is centered on after DSI method collimation. I'm confident the mark was made in the wrong place at the factory.
Wow, I did some collimation using the cheshire ignoring the center mark and centering based of concentricity of the secondary in relation to the primary and then centering the secondary by making the reflection of the primary concentric to the tube. The position of the secondary mark is very similar as the one in your picture. Highpoint agreed to take the scope back and check it
Could not it be possible to simply place a sticker on top of the wrong sticker to correctly mark the center ? You ave enough space not used because of the central obstruction in the middle of the secondary to do that I think It's not a sticker, that's half of the problem, the mirror itself is cut for the donut so putting a sticker on it will then just create a figure eight looking cluster. I have marked the actual center with a sharpie marker, but it's very difficult to see through the cheshire since the original donut stands out so much better, and the true center is inside the original cut donut ring. At least there is a very large central obstruction so I do have plenty of room to work with, maybe I'll just make a big X to mark the center at some point.
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Rodrigo Roesch:
Yes, I got mine delivered on 12/30, so I am in the same boat claiming manufacturer warranty. The issue was when I noticed that something was wrong, I did not know exactly what it was and that took time and the 30 days return implied paying shipping back as well as 10% restocking fee I had one of the bad Rasa 8 mirrors back in 2021, may have been the original discoverer of the problem. I worked with Celestron directly for over a year before I final just sent it home to them with a full payback and future repurchase price guarantee. They were great to work with and all new Rasa 8s now have a primary mirror mask from the factory that has fixed the issue. All that said, I'd really like Apertura to just send a new properly marked secondary without me having to send the whole scope in. Maybe there's some reason they are off centered donuts, especially since there seems to be a pattern, or maybe we just got a bad batch around the same time. I'm sure ours were from the manufacturing run since we bought them at the same time basically.
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I believe it is a bad batch, usually if they engrave in mass production, it could be just bad number set on the computer. To me, it would not make sense to have something off center if you need all centered for a good collimation. Even their instructions state to center the doughnut with the crosshairs of the Cheshire, so if the mark is off the secondary won’t be in the center of the primary
By , the way, I had issues with the RASA 8” too. It was also an entirely bad batch and Celestron replaced those telescopes with new ones since the issue was not fixable. So if it is the whole batch, I believe it will take some time to have the scope fixed. In the case of Celestron, they gave me the option of a full refund or wait for 6 months. I opted for the wait since this is a unique design and I could not get another f/2 any other place
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All that said, I'd really like Apertura to just send a new properly marked secondary without me having to send the whole scope in. from what I read RC mirors secondary and primary are coupled together so I don't think it is possible to send only a secondary in replacement.
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Rodrigo Roesch:
I believe it is a bad batch, usually if they engrave in mass production, it could be just bad number set on the computer. To me, it would not make sense to have something off center if you need all centered for a good collimation. Even their instructions state to center the doughnut with the crosshairs of the Cheshire, so if the mark is off the secondary won’t be in the center of the primary
By , the way, I had issues with the RASA 8” too. It was also an entirely bad batch and Celestron replaced those telescopes with new ones since the issue was not fixable. So if it is the whole batch, I believe it will take some time to have the scope fixed. In the case of Celestron, they gave me the option of a full refund or wait for 6 months. I opted for the wait since this is a unique design and I could not get another f/2 any other place I went with a c9.25 then added a hyperstar. I loved the Rasa and looked at buying it over the RC8, but I actually grew tired of dealing with super fast optics with the hyperstar and not being able to use a filter wheel with my mono camera. I have an Askar fra400 with the f3.9 reducer to fill my 250-400mm range, then a 122mm refractor at 683mm f5.6, and the RC8 at 1100mm at f5.4 ish. I'm still very happy with the RC8, and I think now that I know what's wrong with it it'll much easier to deal with.
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Just a quick update, my collimation is dead on tonight using only the cheshire and the new center mark. Hopefully I hear something from Apertura soon, but at least the problem is an easy fix and just cosmetic.
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Probably my last update on the thread. Highpointscientific reached out today, and after talking with them I decided I wanted to just keep my scope as is, instead of going through the hassle of exchanging. I think my image quality is excellent and now with the new center mark that I put on it I can collimate inside to nearly perfect. Hopefully they'll check some of the ones they have in the warehouse to see if more of them are mi's marked. I imagine if more than a few mirrors have the issue people are going to be struggling with collimation like we were and probably get fed up with the RC8.
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