Cleaning mirrors
From Scope F70076
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| - | I don't know much about cleaning the mirrors, and I have only cleaned the secondary mirror. It was easy and fast, really, though I cannot assure you that I did it in the most correct way, but taking care of such telescope cannot be too complicated, so we should use easy solutions. I rinsed the mirror, took a piece of medical cotton, made it wet, and added to it a bit of soap. Soap is not necessarily the best though, many soaps contain different ingredients such as color, which cannot be removed from the surface. Better than soap is certainly some substance intended for cleaning the optics, but at least it should be a simple soap with no additional ingedients added. Spirit may be better than soap, but again it must be clean, spirit is a strong solvent and thus may contain many kind of ingredients, also it might be dificult to obtain a pure spirit. Then I wiped the mirror slightly, one cannot use any pressure at all. Then I rinsed the mirror thoroughly, and just let it dry. I found that this way there was much less residue than when trying to remove the water droplets anyhow. The best is to rinse the mirror with distilled water immediately after rinsing it with ordinary water, so that there would be no residue. When I cleaned the secondary mirror, I didn't have distilled water, thus there remained some residue which one can barely see only in a strong light, but that has not caused any problems when looking through the telescope. For cleaning the primary mirror, a distilled water would still be a must I think. I bought distilled water from the drug store, distilled water is extremely cheap. The most important is not to touch the surface of the mirror never. Also the mirrors should be cleaned as rarely as ever possible, or never if there is no serious reason. Optics surface is a very subtle thing, it must be exact to the degree close to the wave length of light, thus any residue on that surface is a great impurity. | + | I don't know much about cleaning the mirrors, and I have only cleaned the secondary mirror. It was easy and fast, really, though I cannot assure you that I did it in the most correct way, but taking care of such telescope cannot be too complicated, so we should use easy solutions. |
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| + | I rinsed the mirror, took a piece of medical cotton, made it wet, and added to it a bit of soap. Soap is not necessarily the best though, many soaps contain different ingredients such as color, which cannot be removed from the surface. Better than soap is certainly some substance intended for cleaning the optics, but at least it should be a simple soap with no additional ingedients added. Spirit may be better than soap, but again it must be clean, spirit is a strong solvent and thus may contain many kind of ingredients, also it might be dificult to obtain a pure spirit. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Then I wiped the mirror slightly, one cannot use any pressure at all. Then I rinsed the mirror thoroughly, and just let it dry. I found that this way there was much less residue than when trying to remove the water droplets anyhow. The best is to rinse the mirror with distilled water immediately after rinsing it with ordinary water, so that there would be no residue. | ||
| + | |||
| + | When I cleaned the secondary mirror, I didn't have distilled water, thus there remained some residue which one can barely see only in a strong light, but that has not caused any problems when looking through the telescope. For cleaning the primary mirror, a distilled water would still be a must I think. I bought distilled water from the drug store, distilled water is extremely cheap. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The most important is not to touch the surface of the mirror never. Also the mirrors should be cleaned as rarely as ever possible, or never if there is no serious reason. Optics surface is a very subtle thing, it must be exact to the degree close to the wave length of light, thus any residue on that surface is a great impurity. | ||
Revision as of 18:31, 13 October 2008
I don't know much about cleaning the mirrors, and I have only cleaned the secondary mirror. It was easy and fast, really, though I cannot assure you that I did it in the most correct way, but taking care of such telescope cannot be too complicated, so we should use easy solutions.
I rinsed the mirror, took a piece of medical cotton, made it wet, and added to it a bit of soap. Soap is not necessarily the best though, many soaps contain different ingredients such as color, which cannot be removed from the surface. Better than soap is certainly some substance intended for cleaning the optics, but at least it should be a simple soap with no additional ingedients added. Spirit may be better than soap, but again it must be clean, spirit is a strong solvent and thus may contain many kind of ingredients, also it might be dificult to obtain a pure spirit.
Then I wiped the mirror slightly, one cannot use any pressure at all. Then I rinsed the mirror thoroughly, and just let it dry. I found that this way there was much less residue than when trying to remove the water droplets anyhow. The best is to rinse the mirror with distilled water immediately after rinsing it with ordinary water, so that there would be no residue.
When I cleaned the secondary mirror, I didn't have distilled water, thus there remained some residue which one can barely see only in a strong light, but that has not caused any problems when looking through the telescope. For cleaning the primary mirror, a distilled water would still be a must I think. I bought distilled water from the drug store, distilled water is extremely cheap.
The most important is not to touch the surface of the mirror never. Also the mirrors should be cleaned as rarely as ever possible, or never if there is no serious reason. Optics surface is a very subtle thing, it must be exact to the degree close to the wave length of light, thus any residue on that surface is a great impurity.
