Cleaning the Primary Mirror of a Newtonian Reflecting telescope

Here's how to clean the primary mirror of your telescope in 4 minutes...although it will take you little bit longer than that :)

[infinightsky]

That was the David Attenborough of mirror cleaning. Brilliant!

[ubuntu]

When I first unboxed my telescope, somehow the connector for the eyepieces got lost inside, and I first found this out when I heard it banging around inside bouncing off what could possibly have been the primary mirror. My heart sunk.

Not only had I not got my telescope set up properly for a first view, but I had damaged it before hand. It's a long story how this happened, but it was quite a bummer.

So I phoned up Orion in the States and I actually got through to their main man in tech that works with the mirrors. He told me there was a good chance that everything was ok and just to give it a go before I panicked. I ended up having a really nice chat with him. It was great customer service to say the least.

And he was right. Absolutely nothing wrong with it at all. Phew.

I guess these mirrors are stronger and more durable than you might think. Maybe I got lucky and that metal piece didn't hit off it, I don't know.

Anyway, after that, I wouldn't be too shy about cleaning the thing with care and a bit of love and attention. The tech guy at Orion told me they are quite strong things when it comes down to it. Guess he is right.

[patrickshea]

This video was short, precise and the instructions worked perfectly! Nicely done. KISS

[sanketnarkhede]

Sir is that mirror is plane or rather concave?

[epic_playz]

Im saving this vid in my watch later! Thanks for the help man!

[detectiveamevirus]

I scared to clean my mirror because kinda hard to PUT again at telescope

[ToanNguyen-cfvk]

help me ! I can't clean my main mirror. It is always covered with dust or cotton wool. I tried not to use cotton balls but switched to non-stick towels but the results were the same. It may be difficult for me to understand what I'm saying because I'm not good at English so I asked google to translate. I owe you a thank you for helping me with the laser adjustment in the collimator successfully. Thank you very much

[hdagent]

Nice going! No fear of losing the central little collimating donut? I guess it wouldn't be to hard with a bit of trivial geometry knowledge to put a new one back in the same place.

[gunnarjensen]

I pulled the primary mirror from my 12 inch do and tried to clean it. No luck. Seems mat or oxidised. Can I use a metal polish to make it shine again or do I have to get it to an expert to re-coat it ??

[nick]

My new telescope is now worthless. Went to clean the mirror because there was a little black spec on it. Long story short, almost dropped mirror and touched with hands...Tried getting finger prints off but now there are just blue imprints of my hands...Will this work for my clumsy situation?....Thanks

[HollomanUFOLanding]

Hi, do you you think it's possible to clean the primary mirror without to do collimation afterwards? That's the scary bit for me! Thanks for the video.

[arielelijah]

Good luck using hard water instead of distilled water.