Saturday, April 2, 2016

Cleaning my front lens

Because of all the dew build, my front lens looked pretty bad:

After I successfully installed the dewbuster, I went on cleaning it.

Trusting Astro-Physics, I decided to go with their instructions. The main problem was that their recommended cleaning solution (Baader Wonder Fluid) isn't available in the US. Apparently, it's not allowed to ship to the US because it's very flammable. So I ordered one, had it shipped to my brother in Germany and my nephew brought it here in his luggage when he visited us!!!

Here is everything that I used:

  1. Air blower
  2. Soft camel hair brush
  3. Baader Wonder Fluid
  4. Purosol Enzyme Optical Fluid
  5. Intrinsics Wipes
  6. Rubber gloves (whenever I handle optics I put on gloves to avoid fingerprints)
Following the Astro-Physics instructions, I first blew over the lens. There wasn't any visible difference, but it for sure took out anything loose.

Next, I used the camel hair brush. Again, I couldn't see much of a difference, but it was clear that the brush took out some dirt:

Now, the lens looked like this:

Not much of a difference to above.
Next, I used the Baader Wonder Fluid. I sprayed a little amount on the tissue and carefully wiped over a small area of the lens until I cleaned everything.
The lens now looked like this:
And the wipes like this:

This clearly took out a lot of dirt. Next, I used the Purosol to deal with the remaining dirt:

Much better! Finally, I used the Baader Wonder Fluid to remove any remaining Purosol fluid:


This looks very good!!! The remaining small, silvery spots are apparently only VERY hard to get rid of and have almost no impact on the image. I decided not to tackle them.