Confocal -- Mercury bulb went out of alignment -- fixed now

We started having a strange problem on Wednesday morning with the confocal. When looking through the eyepiece, only a blobby looking area in the center was illuminated (and very brightly). The rest of the field of view was relatively dark. As I was hurriedly preparing for the seminar, I didn't have time to check out the problem thoroughly. I had the user try the confocal, to see where in the light path the problem was, and it appeared that the problem was also in the laser light path in addition to the mercury light path. I called our scope service rep and he said he would try to get someone to come take a look.

I checked back several times later in the day, and the users that were scheduled used the confocal and reported that it worked fine (the confocal light path being fine, and the view in the eyepiece still abnormal). Then on Thursday, I was able to take a minute to check the mercury bulb alignment and it was way off. There are three knobs for adjusting the positioning of the bulb, and it was the one farthest forward that needed adjustment to get it back in alignment. Hopefully, no one is intentionally touching this knob, as it disrupts the mercury illumination for all users. Contact me if you have questions about this or would like for me to show you how to get the mercury bulb back in alignment (or what knobs NOT to touch).

Another strange phenomenon this user reports is that at 40X, often the field of view appears zoomed out, his cells of interest appearing very small. I'm looking into getting a fluorescent micrometer slide of some sort, to be able to check this type of thing out. In the meantime, let me know if you observe this same phenomenon.