A Celestron Tale

I recently purchased a C-14 with XLT coatings from a seller on A-Mart. The scope was in good condition, but one of the rear handles was loose. Even though the scope would be permanently mounted, so that I needed the handle only for manual slewing, the idea of a loose handle bugged me. I decided to ship the C-14 to Celestron and have them retighten the handle, a task which involves removing the rear cell from the tube and the mirror from its mount.

I called Celestron for a return authorization; the rep I spoke to was very knowledgeable and courteous, but this is not the gist of my tale.

I sent Celestron the scope UPS ground. They in turn sent me a repair estimate by mail, which I received 2 days after they received the scope. I sent them, by mail, a check and a signed authorization to do the repair. Two weeks later I received the scope via UPS.

The entire process from my original phone call to Celestron to receiving the repaired scope took less than one month.

But this is not the gist of my tale.
See next post.
Dom Q.

After opening the package I found that Celestron had successfully performed the repair on the loose handle. When I originally called Celestron to get the repair authorization, I asked if they would also clean the optics, since there were some water spots on the corrector, presumably from dew. I was told that cleaning and collimating the optics was standard procedure on scopes returned for repair.

Upon inspecting the corrector, I found that the glass seemed nearly invisible. My initial reaction was, "Did they forget to install the corrector?" Of course, if they had, I realized that the secondary was in suspended animation.

I remember Roland Christen showing a photograph of his 10" RC, in which he noted that the coating on the corrector was so good that the secondary seemed to be floating in mid-air. Not trusting my initial reaction, (a man sees what he wants to see, etc....), I waited for my wife to come home from work and asked her to look at the scope from the corrector end.

"Look at this," I said, as I removed the dust cap. She wasn't sure of what she was supposed to see. "Looks nice," she said, and asked if she could reach inside the tube. As her hand moved toward the corrector, I gently held it back and said, "Don't you see the glass?" "Oh, I didn't realize it was there," she said. That is the gist of my tale.

My previous C-14 had standard Starbright Coatings, whose blue tinge was always obvious. But these XLT coatings, really seem to make the glass disappear.

In practical terms, the XLT's provide a 15% increase in transmission over the Starbright, which amounts to about 0.15 gain in magnitude, and for this scope is like adding an inch of aperture. Whether or not the XLT's will pay off in terms of increased visibility of low contrast planetary detail has yet to be seen, but I doubt that my observing site will ever allow me to see the difference. But, no matter; I use the C-14 mainly for deep space and save the sun, moon and planets for my 15-year old 6" Starfire.

P.S. I was very pleased with Celestron's prompt, courteous and competent service.

Dom Q.

Thanks for sharing this Domenic... it is good to hear when "things go right"...


Good luck, and clear skies!