AstroZap Artificial Star for Collimation - AZ-1600

Collimate your telescope any time; day or night, indoors or out!

The Astrozap Artificial Star is designed to provide a steady, stable reference for telescope collimation. This easy to use device will allow you to collimate your equipment without the worry of star drift or seeing conditions.  The AstroZap Artificial Star generates a very bright point of light that is consistently bright.  It is produced by a 18,000 mcd ultra white LED that is focused on a 100 micro precision laser drilled stainless steel aperture.  The resulting light source will produce beautiful diffraction rings when defocused in any eyepiece.

The AstroZap Artificial Star can be mounted on a table, or it can be attached to a standard photo tripod using the ¼-20 adaptor provided on the bottom of the unit.

Bring your artificial star generator to a star party and provide a perfect point of light for everyone to tweak their collimation on before observing begins.  Your artificially generated star will never move, so there will be no tracking or centering issues to worry about. It is unaffected by atmospheric disturbances, too, so you can get an accurate collimation under any seeing conditions.

The Importance of Proper Collimation

Collimation, in its simplest terms, is the alignment of the mirrors and/or lenses in a telescope or other optical instrument. A telescope that is out of collimation will typically not perform as well as a smaller telescope—25-50% less aperture—that is in collimation. If you put the extra money into a larger telescope, you are not reaping any benefits unless the scope is collimated correctly. Also, your telescope will not reach sharp focus as you increase the magnification unless collimation is perfect. It is well worth the time and effort to collimate your telescope occasionally, and it will only take a few minutes once you have learned the ropes.

The procedure for collimating your particular telescope should be outlined in its manual. Please read the instructions there first. It will tell you the location of the collimation screws and any cautionary notes concerning collimation adjustments.