I crashed my GSO 10" RC

[Manav]

What poor luck! After week or so waiting for a clear night I finally got home to put together the scope and mount. Stupidly, I took off the mount weights before the scope itself and next sec of my life was the longest ever.

Telescope smashes into wall and weights hit the ground.

Apart from the bruising my pride took, the incident resulted in bent OAG adapter and significant bodywork damage to the filter wheel.

What I am really worried about is the fact that after looking through the focuser my secondary/primary doesn't look aligned.

I don't have any collimation tools and am worried I may have stuffed up the scope. Is anyone aware if the GSO RC can be collimated by Bintel or Andrewcomms? Surely a smash into the wall wouldn't have misplaced the primary? Ohh God :sadeyes:

Regards
YB

P.S: I haven't even looked at the QHY9 yet :(

[DavidU]

Not good, not good at all. You are going to have to have a good look at the mirror mounts and see what has shifted. At least no optics were shattered.

[brian nordstrom]

:sadeyes: Sad news , I did something similar with my Takahashi M210 a while ago , on setting up I forgot to tighten the 2 knobs that hold the dovetail onto the mount :question::question::question: , I was turning to grab an eyepiece when out the corner of my eye I seen the OTA start to slide down , Eyepiece hit the grass , and the OTA stopped on the safety bolt before it could fall right out :eyepop: , yep the longest second of my life as well .
Thank God for the safety bolt on my Losmandy dovetail , as I would not have caught it in time .
Scary stuff and yes we all do stupid things sometimes .
Hope all is well , Yagant .
Brian.

[Paul Haese]

You could buy a tak collimation scope to realign it yourself. In fact it is a good idea to have one of those anyway, just for service work. Neither company would handle the collimation, so it might have to go back to Taiwan to get it done there if you want someone else to do it. Depending on damage, it might be better buy the tak scope.

[AstroJason]

Far out mate, not good. Ill bring my tak scope in on tuesday and you can use it.

[Manav]

Well I ordered the OAG replacement threads from Teleskop-Express so they should be in a week or so. While I was there I saw the that TS guys offer collimation tools specifically it says "The primary mirror is fixed in its precisely machined mirror cell. Collimation of the telescope is done through the secondary mirror. Collimation is rather easy and can even be done by an inexperienced amateur astronomer - we do however recommend to take your time with the collimation!"


In my case the filterwheel took the damage and the shock would have gone through the focuser body and holder (enough to bend the OAG adaptor). I'll try the Tak scope from Jason and see if I can get that to sort things out.

Has anyone who owns a GSO RC seen or used this? (https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p4043_TS-focuser-collimation---Tilting---with-M117-Thread---for-RC-and-Refractors.html)

[brian nordstrom]

:thumbsup: Good news , yes my M210 has a fixed primary as well and its all done with the secondary , easy to do and as TS says , take your time and when it gets close ,,,,, only tiny !!! :eyepop: movements < 1/20th a turn .

Brian

[multiweb]

Terrible news. Hope all is well. You're lucky you didn't break any glass.

[Manav]

Yeah! Fingers crossed that the primary hasn't moved otherwise I'm stuffed :(

[RickS]

Bad luck but it seems like it could have been much worse. Hope you're up and running again soon.

[04Stefan07]

Worse feeling when that happens. I remember when my OTA slid off my mount but luckily I caught it otherwise it would have landed on the brick floor!

[Manav]

No luck today the clouds rolled in as I was setting up! This is going be a long week...

[White Rabbit]

That sucks, I know how you feel, I'm sure we all have horror stories similar.

If your camera still works, down load a trial version of ccd inspector. It has a colimation routine and all you need is a ccd.

Hope it all works out.

Sandy

[ReaPerMan]

Yes I have one. I had a lot of trouble with my alignment when my scope first arrived and I was using a Catseye Autocollimator and a Laser to get me close. I was chasing all over the place and making things worse. I did buy one of these from TE and It has helped and is great for eliminating any tilt. After a lot of trouble I finally achived good collimation using a "hall of Mirrors technique described here. http://www.davidcortner.com/slowblog/20110815c.php The Tak scope I believe is a effective (but expensive) device and requires you to have the correct adaptors to use it. I have used CCDInspector to verify the collimation and achieved good results with only a little bit of tilt to be resolved. Good luck as I know how frustrating it can be.

Paul

[Manav]

Paul - Thats the best news I've heard this week! I'll ask TS to add that to my order. Any recommendation on collimation kit? Should I go Howie Glatter as shown here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxviegvQns8

[telecasterguru]

Good luck and let us know how you get on.

Frank

[ReaPerMan]

You can see that he was using the TS adapter for the central alignment, this is what I use it for as well. The howie glatter looks good, I have the Hotech self centering Laser and its good but it does not project the rings like the glatter just a set of cross hairs. It's up to you if you think that the howie is the way to go. Note he mentioned the Hall of mirrors as well, I can say that this definitly does work.

Good Luck

Paul

[lazjen]

Whoa. Good luck with getting it all sorted out.

[E_ri_k]

Not good...Hope you can sort it out. What Paul said, TAK collimation scope. I had some collimation dramas with my RC recently, but mainly from me being stupid:P

The TAK scope makes it quite easy to check the primary and secondary.

Good luck :)
Erik

[allan gould]

Al's collimation aid will also get you spot on as a final step before checking on a mag 2-3 star.
Allan