Successful Rebuild and Upgrades

The upgraded Celestron 70mm telescope.          

I've already written a few times about rebuilding this particular little telescope but I added another part recently so it is worth writing about again. 

As purchased, this scope was a hunk of junk. Celestron should be embarrassed by all their sub-$400 telescope packages because they are all worthless as sold. I suspect a lot of people end up getting turned off to astronomy as a result of being disappointed by purchasing a lousy, frustrating telescope. Only the very determined will continue this hobby after becoming frustrated beyond belief.

I bought a Celestron 114EQ for our son a number of years ago. We quickly realized that this particular scope was not ideal for a beginner and we never got any decent views out of it so, the next Christmas, I purchased a simpler Celestron 70AZ. This telescope wasn't much better than the 114EQ but I felt it had potential for various reasons not worth explaining here. 

This telescope was used approximately twice before our son lost interest in astronomy. It turns out that he lost interest because these telescopes truly are terrible and frustrating as purchased right out of the box.

          Here you can see the upgraded eyepiece and diagonal. 

A few years passed and we now have grandchildren so I dug out the two old Celestron telescopes to see if we could use them. I evaluated each and found that the 114EQ was worthy only of the trash bin but also found that the 70AZ might be salvageable if I upgraded some of the parts.

I stripped the salvageable parts off the 114EQ and then tossed that scope in the trash bin. In short, that telescope is so poorly designed and manufactured that it should be banned! The 114EQ and 127EQ telescopes are Bird-Jones reflector telescopes that are frustrating to use and maintain by even experienced astronomers so I cannot ever recommend either of those telescopes.

I then turned my attention to the 70AZ... came up with a plan... and purchased some new parts... 

First, I removed the 70AZ from the altiitude-azimuth mount (the AZ in the title) and mounted it on the equatorial mount I salvaged from the 114EQ. To do this, I needed to purchase a set of cradle rings and a dovetail bar. In order to get better balance on this new mount, the dovetail bar I purchased was a long-ish 8" dovetail bar. Additionally, this long dovetail bar had a long slot down the middle of the bar for mounting rings anywhere along the length of the bar rather than just at the ends or the very center. This gave me more leeway in setting up the telescope on the mount. 

This long dovetail bar allows me to slide the telescope far forward on the mount so I can balance my lightweight Sony camera or heavy eyepieces yet I can also slide it backward to accommodate lighter eyepieces. This was a major improvement in the usability of this telescope and cost only about $50 altogether since I didn't need to buy the equatorial mount. If you need to buy a lightweight equatorial mount, you can find one for $100.

I replaced the flimsy AZ mount with a small equatorial mount.          

Next, I happily threw away the barlow and the eyepieces that came with this telescope and bought new eyepieces. Those eyepieces and the barlow were definitely a big problem in getting even decent views. I purchased a set of four Orion Expanse eyepieces in 6mm, 9mm, 15mm and 20mm. These eyepieces function very well with this little telescope and cost approximately $225 but are well worth the added cost. I also bought a new GSO 2.5x ED barlow but you can definitely get by without a barlow if you purchase a full set of eyepieces. 

The diagonal that came with the 70AZ was a horrendous piece of plastic junk so I replaced that with a high quality William Optics diagonal with a built-in helical focuser. This helical focuser provides the much needed ability to fine tune your focus on this telescope. This definitely improved the usability of this telescope and only added an additional $70 to the upgrade cost.

The lube on the focuser tube had dried and was exceptionally sticky so that needed some work. The same was true with the equatorial mount that I was now using so I disassembled each, cleaned them, lubed them and reassembled them. 

          This telescope arrived with a nice red dot finder.

All of these improvements made this telescope a great grab-and-go telescope or one that could be used by the grandchildren. I actually use this telescope fairly often now because it is so lightweight and the views are now quite good. On the rare clear nights when the views look good through this telescope, I then know it would be worth dragging out my bigger and heavier telescope. If the views are kind of lousy because of atmospheric conditions, then I know not to bother dragging out the bigger, heavier telescope. 

I've been doing some solar astronomy with my better telescope lately so I decided to add one more upgraded part for this little 70EQ. I purchased an inexpensive solar filter for this little Celestron 70EQ. Now I can view the sun through this little telescope which provides a great introduction to solar astronomy. This Celestron filter, which is made specifically for this telescope, only cost $16.95. Not a bad price at all for an introduction to solar astronomy! At night, you can still use the telescope without the solar filter to view the night sky. 

The Celestron Solar Filter attached tightly to the dew shield.          

Recently, I've put this little Celestron 70EQ to the test by mounting my little Sony a6000 on it. I've shot images of the moon as well as of the sun and both are quite nice!  We've viewed Jupiter and its Galilean moons... also quite nice. We've also viewed many stars. Other planets have been too low in the sky to view from our backyard which is surrounded by tall trees but I'm confident those views would be nice through this little telescope too! One of these nights, I plan to wander a few minutes from our home to get more expansive views of the night sky without trees in my way.

For less than $400 in upgrades, I turned a useless $75 telescope into a nice entry-level, grab-and-go telescope. At first, this may seem like a lot of money for just getting started but, realistically speaking, any worthwhile entry telescope will be in the $400-500 range so these upgrades were well worth the extra cost. 

A nice cost comparison is to compare this type of optics... astronomy... to another type of optics... photography. People wouldn't think twice about spending $500+ for an entry level dSLR camera kit. An entry level telescope should cost about the same. High quality optics cost money regardless of the type of optics and and type of imaging.

I had some experimenting to do along the way but, in the end, this upgrade rebuild was well worth the time and money spent. Hopefully this short blog post will help someone else upgrade their almost-useless Celestron 70AZ telescope which, no doubt, is collecting dust in the far reaches of a dusty attic or cluttered closet. With these upgrades, this telescope is capable of being a nice little scope for viewing the infinite sky.

Here are a couple of photos of the moon that I shot through this telescope. I attached my little Sony a6000 to the diagonal... used a remote shutter release... and captured some nice images... 

This morning, just as a short test of my new solar filter, I recorded a short video of the sun just to show the solar astronomy capabilities of the telescope now. Purchasing this inexpensive solar filter was a great upgrade...

A single image of the sun through my Celestron 70mm refractor.

Overall, I'm very happy with this telescope now and it actually gets quite a bit of use now too!  

My feelings about Celestron in general, however, are not good after my experiences with two of their entry level telescopes. I tossed one Celestron telescope in the garbage and I had to rebuild and upgrade the other Celestron telescope just to make is usable. That is not good. To be honest, most people probably wouldn't even consider the upgrades I recommend here in the blog entry so this really isn't good for Celestron.

As a result, I cannot and will not ever recommend a Celestron telescope package to any beginner. Celestron's higher end telescopes are probably pretty good but their entry level stuff is complete garbage and should be avoided at all cost. Yet, I find it hard to believe but they still seem to sell more telescopes than any other manufacturer. People must be attracted to the price and name recognition. I, however, do regret my Celestron purchases.

All that being said, this upgrade through rebuilding this telescope was definitely a success.