114 is back!

So yeah, managed to mend it DIY way, it does not look so great but well it still works.

So here's what happened:

I was trying to shoot Sirius around mid night and was dead tired. Was scrambling around half a sleep and toppled the telescope over. Had this been on grass, this would've been fine but it fell over and hit a tiled ledge on the balcony. Saw a piece coming off and my immediate thought was that its the bracket that went off. It wasn't the bracket, it was the mount.

The only option I could think of was to write to Celestron  and see if I could purchase a replacement part. Unfortunately they didn't have any. They did confirm however that if I were to speak to one of their retailers, I might have a very small chance of finding one. Few emails later I figured that this is also not a possibility and the options I have are to purchase a new tripod-mount (i.e. the entire set), a new telescope or try to somehow mend it my self.

With the PANSTARRS comet around the corner in March, I didn't have enough time to purchase a new telescope and get it delivered. The cost of delivery also proved to be a bit high (the Celestron NexStar 130 SLT now costs around 425$ in the US. It has computerised tracking and basically allows you to just put your telescope out there and punch in the object you want to track and it will automatically point at it. Unfortunately it would cost around 125$ to bring it down here. And that's excluding taxation.) I decided to go for the only other option left, try to fix it my self.

The mount of this telescope I think is made of cast iron. It is not that heavy and has a partly metal-partly plastic feeling. I wasn't really sure if I could weld it back, but I knew it was going to be an irrecoverable act. I might damage it so that there was no hope of salvaging. I also thought about drilling holes on the two pieces and bolt them back together, but that was also down the path of no return. So I decided to try the good old "Multibond" method (Multibond is a type of an adhesive or a glue available in Sri Lanka. It is quite stronger than general paper glue and usually used to glue together pieces of wood and plastics). Cleaned up the pieces and glued them and kept it like that for a few days, but it didn't really work. The glue was holding the pieces together, but the glue was also elastic. Whenever I tried to mount the tube and screw it in to place, the broken piece would shift away. Last resort? Bucket wire.

Bucket wire is actually a type of metal wire used to hang a type of chines lanterns. It has a guage of about 24-25 (I think) and is quite flexible and strong if you dont twist it. And here's what I did with it:

Not sure if you can see it clearly, but the wire runs across the orange coloured metal bar (on left) and the broken piece (in gray on the photo on the right side). Once you wrap it up a few times, it is quite sturdy and the final result is:

A working Celestron 114EQ! In case you are wondering, I have shortened the legs so its easier for me to take it here and there. The legs are twice as long as shown.

So hopefully, some more serious shots, and if lucky, some of Saturn and the comet of course.