Local seeing is not good
Tuesday evening around 20:00 local I opened up the observatory with the intent to do an optical collimation and some imaging of Saturn and Jupiter. It was hazy, The near full waning moon was up and wiping out most constellations and actually also had a glowing halo around it. Not good.
My method of collimating is to use the same optical setup as when I am imaging, ie a 90deg diagonal, a x2 barlow and the imaging camera.
I picked a bright start overhead, Vega in this case, run the focus out, check the symmetry, run it back through the middle of focus and back out the other side and check symmetry again.
If it looks symmetrical, it is collimated. If it does not, then it is not.
I looked, ran through it several times, and I could not make the judgement call about yes or no.
I include three images below, you take a guess.
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After that I went ahead and did a series of runs on Saturn (almost due south and at highest altitude) and then Jupiter, shutting down before 21:00 local
This was the best of Saturn, best 2% of approx 4K frames,
and the best of Jupiter that night, the best 25% of approx 10K frames.
Both planetary images are disappointing.
Later on it was mentioned that it was probably never a good idea to try and collimate on a night of bad seeing or transparency. Will have to try again under better conditions!