Post by patrickm on Jun 13, 2010 22:13:46 GMT -6
A couple of weeks ago, I finally buckled down and ordered my new finderscope from Celestron. It was always suggested as one of the first things to upgrade, and this became readily apparent under the LP Chicago skies. A red dot finder serves no purpose if you can't see anything through it to begin with!
The existing holes were way too far forward on this little tube, and so adding this scope through them threw the balance way off and I'm guessing would have burned out my motor in a short amount of time. I am not good with fixing stuff like this, so I got very lucky a week later when we were invited to Rockford for a gathering of in-laws, which included our delightful nephew Chris, an engineer, my brother-in-law Jon, who works on airplanes and sells parts, and their friend Gene, who has worked for the phone company forever laying telephone cable and is fearless around a workbench.
I took my scope to Rockford in the vain hope that the skies would clear up for us there, but I struck out again on that front. However, when I expressed my need to properly mount the new scope, all four of us where in the basement workshop in no time. We quickly decided that we would have to pull the back mirror assembly off of my scope for the first time. I took a deep breath and we dove in. Here are the photos.
The Primary Mirror, which I got a chance to gently clean for the first time.
Rear Mirror Assembly Removed. Eek!
Gene, Chris (with scope) and Jon (back)
Scope awaits surgery with Cookie Monster providing moral support
Marking the spot
Drilling the guide holes
Julia and Jon look on. Caine can't watch.
Drilling the main holes.
Kinda hard to see, but the crud we wiped from the inside of the scope.
Gene also used a slightly larger drill bit to remove the metal burls from the inside of the hole.
My newly balanced Newtonian.
New inside of scope before reassembly
Gene has a well-deserved beer.
Jon finds the electrical tape for the old mount holes that we leave open just in case.
And there ya go. The whole process took about forty-five minutes from start to finish. She works great, and I can't believe I went this long without a proper finderscope.
Got an even bigger bonus when Chris collimated my scope for me afterwards. Joe told me that the collimation "would work itself out," and I didn't know what that meant until Chris did it for me. ;-) It is noticeably better and looks great now!
Couldn't have done it without these guys!
Thanks gang!
The existing holes were way too far forward on this little tube, and so adding this scope through them threw the balance way off and I'm guessing would have burned out my motor in a short amount of time. I am not good with fixing stuff like this, so I got very lucky a week later when we were invited to Rockford for a gathering of in-laws, which included our delightful nephew Chris, an engineer, my brother-in-law Jon, who works on airplanes and sells parts, and their friend Gene, who has worked for the phone company forever laying telephone cable and is fearless around a workbench.
I took my scope to Rockford in the vain hope that the skies would clear up for us there, but I struck out again on that front. However, when I expressed my need to properly mount the new scope, all four of us where in the basement workshop in no time. We quickly decided that we would have to pull the back mirror assembly off of my scope for the first time. I took a deep breath and we dove in. Here are the photos.
The Primary Mirror, which I got a chance to gently clean for the first time.
Rear Mirror Assembly Removed. Eek!
Gene, Chris (with scope) and Jon (back)
Scope awaits surgery with Cookie Monster providing moral support
Marking the spot
Drilling the guide holes
Julia and Jon look on. Caine can't watch.
Drilling the main holes.
Kinda hard to see, but the crud we wiped from the inside of the scope.
Gene also used a slightly larger drill bit to remove the metal burls from the inside of the hole.
My newly balanced Newtonian.
New inside of scope before reassembly
Gene has a well-deserved beer.
Jon finds the electrical tape for the old mount holes that we leave open just in case.
And there ya go. The whole process took about forty-five minutes from start to finish. She works great, and I can't believe I went this long without a proper finderscope.
Got an even bigger bonus when Chris collimated my scope for me afterwards. Joe told me that the collimation "would work itself out," and I didn't know what that meant until Chris did it for me. ;-) It is noticeably better and looks great now!
Couldn't have done it without these guys!
Thanks gang!
