I have an RC telescope which requires collimation checks every once in a while. This tool works great. Load up your capturing software, and defocus a star in your telescope with the live preview on. Then take the collimation aid and place the overlay over your image adjusting the outer and inner circles to see how you need to adjust your scope's collimation. Works great!
exactly what I was looking for…PLEASE update to 64bit
I was delighted to find this collimation reticle overlay for use on my mac to perform Astronomy Shacks alignment process. I originally used parallels to allow me to run a Window app that did the same, but I prefer to stay native Mac. Please do update this to 64bit before Apple pulls the plug on 32bit mac apps
I have an RC telescope which requires collimation checks every once in a while. This tool works great. Load up your capturing software, and defocus a star in your telescope with the live preview on. Then take the collimation aid and place the overlay over your image adjusting the outer and inner circles to see how you need to adjust your scope's collimation. Works great!
exactly what I was looking for…PLEASE update to 64bit
I was delighted to find this collimation reticle overlay for use on my mac to perform Astronomy Shacks alignment process. I originally used parallels to allow me to run a Window app that did the same, but I prefer to stay native Mac. Please do update this to 64bit before Apple pulls the plug on 32bit mac apps
I have an RC telescope which requires collimation checks every once in a while. This tool works great. Load up your capturing software, and defocus a star in your telescope with the live preview on. Then take the collimation aid and place the overlay over your image adjusting the outer and inner circles to see how you need to adjust your scope's collimation. Works great!
exactly what I was looking for…PLEASE update to 64bit
I was delighted to find this collimation reticle overlay for use on my mac to perform Astronomy Shacks alignment process. I originally used parallels to allow me to run a Window app that did the same, but I prefer to stay native Mac. Please do update this to 64bit before Apple pulls the plug on 32bit mac apps
Collimating an astronomical telescope usually includes a step where an image of a star is viewed, or imaged by a camera, out of focus. Adjustments are made to the optical elements by adjusting screws, typically 3 of them, to bring various parts of this out-of-focus image into perfect concentricity. This can be tricky as, although the eye is quite good at detecting lack of concentricity, it’s not infallible.
Collimation Aid is a simple app whose only purpose is to display three concentric circles on a transparent window. This window can be overlaid on an image, particularly an image from a camera attached to a telescope. The size of the window can be adjusted as required, and so can the size, and relative sizes, of the circles (via the Setup menu). The colour (and so brightness) of the circles can also be adjusted in the same way. A set of three numbers (representing the collimation screws) is shown around the outermost circle, and the rotational position of these (while remaining equally spaced from each other) can be simply adjusted.
Finally, Collimation Aid provides a pair of orthogonal, centred grid lines to aid in centring the pattern on the image.
By the way -- the second screenshot shows an image from a scope which is not particularly well collimated! One of the reasons I developed the app in the first place!