Modification to the basic Celestron wedge

I was recently asked about a problem in maintaining polar alignment due to a heavy scope being cantilevered all over the place on a wedge.  The standard Celestron wedge (which I use) would also give you problems as the heavy C11 or C14 is moved around the night sky, mainly due to the open ended construction where a large box end is fairly free to flex as several kg worth of scope is swung around.  The solution is to close off the box end with some sheet aluminium – the thicker the better.  I used 2mm thick aluminium sheet and bent it to fit over the end of the wedge.  Some slots were cut to allow solid bolting of the sheet to the wedge and the result can be seen here.

The modification has transformed a basically unusable wedge into a wedge that has solidly supported my Hyperstar C11 since I started imaging towards the end of 2004.

This entry was posted in Equipment, Projects. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *