How to Clean Your Telescope Eyepieces (Its easy if you follow these simple instructions)

While you should not clean your lenses too often as many lenses are coated in special substances. Keeping your eyepieces clean is just as important as aligning your finderscope or collimating your telescope. 

The reason your eyepieces get dirty is because the eyepieces regularly comes into contact your face and eye lashes, causing grease to build up on the lens, which can cause your views to be affected.

When the eyepiece gets this dirty it is time to clean the eyepiece. For this job I would highly recommend the Baader Optical Wonderful Fluid. This stuff is brilliant it takes up all the fatty containments, eyelashes, fingerprints and pollen. It also does not leave a smear as it evaporates away afterwards. To apply it would also recommend a microfiber cloth rather than something like tissue or cotton balls as you do not know what these materials are coated in.

A microfiber cloth is completely clear of any chemicals that you did not want to appear on the lens and once dirty can be washed in a washing machine as usual.

Before applying this Optical Wonder Fluid any larger containments on the lens should be removed. To do this I would use a hurricane blower it is a simple little device to blow a focused beam of air.

To blow off any particles before you start wiping with a cloth on the lens to avoid causing any scratches. A good technique is to blow around at different angles to remove any large bits.

If the lens is still dirty you should now use the Optical Wonder Fluid. Do not apply the fluid directly to the lens if you do that it could flood the actual lens and get into the cement that holds the lens in the eyepiece together causing it to become loose or flood into the centre of the eyepiece.

Instead apply a couple of squirts to a section of the cloth and then give gentle, circular wipes around the lens, then put your lens cap back on and do the same for any other dirty lenses you have.

To see a visual representation of this process please watch the episode below.

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