How do I maintain my telescope? Help a newbie astronomer!

Factual Questions
1

I own a 10" Dobsonian mount reflector. While using it to look at Mars the other night, I couldn’t resolve a “disc” no matter how hard I tried. I assume I need to “colminate” it. Can anyone tell my how to go about this?

As well, I am absolutely ANAL about keeping the lens/tube caps on, but there is a small amount of “dust” and specks of stuff on the primary mirror. While I don’t think it is of any significant quantity to realistically be reducing the effectiveness of my scope, I a suspect within a year or two I will want to remove or clean the primary, if possible.

I know that Windex and/or just wiping the mirror is a big no-no, so how would one go about “cleaning” the mirror? The tube is approx 4-1/2’ long as well, how would a person actually “go about” cleaning it as well? Would you have to remove it?

Thanks!

2

I really hate doing this, but I’m going to give it one tiny <bump>

3

“Collimate.”

I suggest this resource: http://discoverydobs.homestead.com/files/collimation.html

Don’t assume you need to collimate; it might have just been lousy seeing. The guide linked demonstrates how to test for collimation.

4

A small amount of dust will not affect performance. For a large amount of dust, I’d use an air blower. (Preferably the hand-operated rubber blower, not canned air.) If you need to clean a seriously dirty mirror you need to take it out of the telescope. Immerse the mirror in clean water with some dishwasher detergent and wipe lightly and carefully (while mirror is immersed) with clean cotton. Then rinse with pure alcohol, and let drain/dry. (Drugstores often sell alcohol diluted with water, and that won’t do.) Normally you can go for a decade or two without requireing such drastic measures. And after removing and cleaning a mirror, you’ll need to do a complete collimation from scratch.

Most likely you don’t need to clean the mirror, it just needs a minor collimation correction. Also, are you sure it wasn’t just poor seeing, as RickJay suggested? And did you let the telescope cool down before use? You need to let the telescope cool down to ambient temperature, which usually means removing the cap and leaving it outside for an hour or two.

5

Oh, I am by no means sure it just wasn’t poor observation conditions! On retrospect, its actually quite likely as Mars was quite low in the sky, hence I was looking through a lot of atmosphere! I am however sure the telescope was down to ambient, as I brought it out about 5 hours earlier to warm up to outside temperatures.

That would explain why I couldn’t find any hits when I searched for it!

Thanks for the help!