Artificial Star with printer nozzle

thingiverse

I wanted an artificial start to collimate my scope. Rather than buy one, I wondered if I couldn't use a printer nozzle with an exact, known diameter to do the job. This is my attempt. It is designed specifically for my Duracell 350 lumen LED flashlight (with one, square LED emitter in it). I stretched a little bit of white grocery bag plastic over the end rather than sand the glass and covered the back of the stand with aluminum foil so that it isn't glowing from the light. I did have to put a little pad on the back of the stand to raise the flashlight up a bit to get it square (needs a small radius adjustment in the design, I guess). I'm using a .2mm nozzle at the moment. I figure with my 132mm, f/7 scope I should probably set the thing about 150 ft from the scope for best affect. But I tried it in the house during the day yesterday at only about 25 ft or so and you can certainly see that it will work. When de-focused, could tell it was out of collimation and was able to at least make some rough adjustments to get it close. So, I think this works. I'll try to get a .1mm nozzle so the "star" is even smaller.