Celestron Nexstar 102

[banjaxed]

I have a Celestron Nexstar 102 refractor which optically I am very pleased with, however the tripod is far from steady.
Has anyone successfully managed to improve the tripod or found a better replacement.
Thanks in advance.

[Cosmic Geoff]

Unfortunately the tripod is on the wobbly side and there is no solution which is not either a lot of work or very expensive. There are various expedients such as weighting the tripod but these are not particularly effective.  The tripod will be more stable with the legs left retracted.

The telescope has (I assume) a standard dovetail so you could re-mount it on whatever mount you like.

I made up a SLT tripod with a spare 'bowl' (you will know what I mean) fitted with wooden legs. It was quite a lot of work, but it is permanently installed in my garden and is definitely more stable than the original.

Look on the bright side - this f5 telescope is primarily suited to low power widefield viewing. 🙂

 

[banjaxed]

Thanks for the input, looks like I will have to keep looking for a solution.

btw I didn’t mention mine is the GT which is f9.8.

[Demonperformer]

I have one of these (although not used since I got the neq6 working). The only thing I found to help was to hang a "weight" (aka bag of dirt) from under the tray bit. This lowers the centre of gravity and helps a bit ... not a particularly big bit, but noticeably, so might be worth trying ...

[Cosmic Geoff]

If you have put a f9.8 102mm reftactor on a SLT mount that could be your problem.   The SLT mount is designed for short and lightweight OTAs and the pendulum effect of a long OTA (as distinct from its weight) is widely thought to make matters worse.