I spent 2 years cleaning my telescope lens with the wrong stuff

Turns out using eyeglass wipes on a coated lens is a terrible idea - my neighbor with a 12 inch dob saw me doing it and almost had a heart attack. He handed me a proper lens cleaning kit and now I can actually see Jupiter's bands without them looking like a blurry mess. Anyone else find out they were wrecking their gear because nobody told them the basics?

2 comments

2 Comments

james53316d ago

Hang on, I gotta push back a little here. Eyeglass wipes are not great for coated lenses, sure, but "2 years of damage" is a stretch unless you were scrubbing with sandpaper. I've been using microfiber cloths and a bit of distilled water for years and my views are crystal clear. Most modern coatings are way tougher than people give them credit for. Unless you were using something with alcohol or ammonia, you probably just had smudges and dust, not actual damage. People get way too precious about this stuff when the real enemy is just cleaning it too often.

the_lucas15d ago

Bruh that reminds me of my buddy Mike. He got a new pair of ray-bans and used those wipes that come in the little packets for like a month straight. By then his lenses looked like someone took sandpaper to em, super cloudy. I told him to just breathe on em and use a microfiber but he swore the wipes were fine.