Optical problem - anyone know a solution?

[snabald]

Ok first off - I have this scope: http://meade.telescopes.com/products...UBE_42685.html

It's hard to describe, so I used Celestia and Photoshop to simulate what I am seeing - at 40x planets look like glowing outlines, which I guess is to be expected, but they look far too bright.

At 111x, I get this weird glowing "ghost" around what I'm looking at, it's actually a bit brighter than depicted in the pics, I can see details such as the Cassini division, and ring shadows, I can see two prominent cloud bands on Jupiter, but the ghosts are really annoying - is there a way to fix this? Would better eyepieces help?

The first two pics are how Jupiter appears at 20x and 111x respectively, the second two are how Saturn appears at 40x and 111x...

[Fr. Wayne]

Giving the eyepiece a half rotation doesn't change the direction of the ghost, I presume. Since the ghost is not symmetrical around bright target object, I suspect a stress from one of your adjustment screws behind main mirror or when you look into eyesocket without an eyepiece the line-up is not centered well. If these things aren't the problem, do an out-of-focus collomation test on a bright star and look for mirror defects.

[Wolverine]

Sounds like some sort of extreme coma to me. When was the last time you collimated?

[snabald]

Sounds like some sort of extreme coma to me. When was the last time you collimated?

About a month ago... and I have not tried rotating the eyepiece.

[redshifter]

Perhaps one or more of the screws holding down the main mirror are too tight? They only need to barely press down on the clips that keep the mirror in place.