Dave's 16 Inch Binocular Telescope Page

So how do you get the two images to merge, radio control provided the answer. Once both halves of the binocular telescope are aligned with lasers the next step is to look through the instrument with a bright star in the field of view. Chances are what you will see is two bright dots fairly well separated, so what do you do next? I use fine tweaks of one of the primary mirrors. When we started we used to do this with two people, one looking while the other adjusted, this is a real pain.

I then added a radio control plane servo system to the collimation bolts of the left hand mirror This made the adjustment easy to do yourself while viewing. The adjustment needs to happen with different viewing altitudes as the focuser boards and the secondary holders I think must flex a minute amount. This idea works great and it's easy to merge the images. I usually start by purposely vertically misaligning  the images then getting the horizontal images correct then re-joining the stars vertically.