APOD: A View from the Zone (2014 Mar 07)

[SouthEastAsia]

I'm liking this photo by Jack Fusco, very much...

Respects, from Nantucket Island, MA, Earth, current position.

[LocalColor]

Lovely photo - for some reason the phrase 'Genetic Drift' comes to mind.

[Anthony Barreiro]

...Back to the light point question considering your responses, for collimating my reflector, do you think one light source better than another? (Not that I would likely choose Venus but it is a nice bright object)

You should collimate a telescope at the highest magnification atmospheric conditions allow. At high magnification planets are not point sources, they're disks, or crescent or gibbous. It's best to pick a star that's bright but not so bright that it's scintillating a lot. Stars that are higher in the sky will be steadier because you're looking through less atmosphere. If you're using a tracking mount, any star will do. If your mount doesn't track, Polaris is the best collimation star (in the northern hemisphere), because it's relatively bright and it's the slowest moving star in the sky.

You could also use a laser collimator.