82 replies to this topic

[George N]

GeorgeN

 

.......  The C9.25 OTA survived just find however the CGX did not. It developed a plethora of electronics problems, sensors, main board etc...etc.  We thought that the CGX might not survive. None of the Celestron mounts survive long even when stored in the observatory telescope room which does stay at  or below ambient temperatures........

 

........The mounts that survive the best are the Losmandys G8s and G11s on permanent piers on the open deck.  ......

Clear Skies, Never Lose the Wonder

 

RF

 

I must say -- I'm not surprised. It mirrors the long-term experience at Kopernik Observatory & Science Center in Vestal, NY - where we get a temp range of minus 25 F to 105 F - but almost constant high humidity. We have had several Celestron mounts fail - even tho we bring the hand control into the building. Our Losmandy G-11 has been tracking away in its dome for around 15 years -- and last Wednesday I used the OGS 20-inch RC with OGS GEM (15-inch Byres drives) to image M-13 -- and it has been in the dome since 1993 (with several electronics improvements). We did move the PCs out of the dome and into a near room and computer cabinet - but that was mostly because the mice like to eat the electronics! 

 

On the other hand - Adirondack Sky Center & Observatory's C-14 Edge on an old CGE Pro has sat in a roll of for 10+ years and works fine - as does a Meade GEM and an iOptron GEM, However it is a rare day when the temp in the Adirondacks gets above 90 F --- minus 35 is however not all that strange to the locals.

[25585]

Desert is desert, gentrified or not.

[12BH7]

OK - you "desert dwellers" -- tell us residents of the dank, swampy, wet forests of the East the real story of any *actual* damage sustained by astro equipment (or cameras or computers or.....) from leaving it out in the desert sun at 100+ degrees.

 

So -- "Where's the beef?" - no theory - who has had an actual C-8 or Dob or binoculars or..... melted into a puddle after sitting out in the desert sun for a day or a week?

 

Maybe we should try an experiment? Someone in the Southwestern deserts rig up a cheap dummy scope using some plastic parts, plywood, hardware store tubing -- cover it with a plastic or cloth and leave it "out there" for a week or two. Does it die, or survive unharmed?

Ok, here's a picture of a few things that the heat has damaged. The router plate has a crack from center to end. The oscillating saws handle cracked and I have a bunch of power cords that have dry rotted. There's more but I don't feel I need to go looking around for more. 

 

My LX90 mount has a SINGNIFICANT amount of high impact plastic, nylon gears, encoders, cheap electronics and even cheaper wiring.

 

This isn't from leaving it out in the heat for a year or two. This is over 15 years of baking heat. If I had the money to replace the mount with a Losmandy I would, but I don't . 

 

I'm at a point where if my mount goes, I can't justify buying a new one for $3k. I'll be forced to transition into my "downsized" setup. 

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[Mike Spooner]

Lots of daily use vehicles set outside in the Arizona desert - for years. Lots of electronics. My 30+ year old AP1200 (not go-to) sets out though sometimes I take the control paddle and cables inside. If rain is forecast I cover it. It’s pretty close to polar aligned which I don’t want to mess with (though I should fine tune it again I suppose). 
 

A/C units sit out in direct sun all the time and do pretty well overall. Capacitors fail occasionally. Lots of industrial equipment in use 24 hours a day though critical control panels might have instrument air piped in to cabinets to keep dry/cooler. Not sure, but I don’t think mil spec ICs or other components are used though I could be wrong. We used a lot of cooling for computers (luckily humans could also benefit from the chillers - LOL). I’ve had hard drives that lost their way when either too hot or cold but most stuff does well if designed to disperse generated heat.

YMMV

 

Mike Spooner

[12BH7]

Lots of daily use vehicles set outside in the Arizona desert - for years. Lots of electronics. My 30+ year old AP1200 (not go-to) sets out though sometimes I take the control paddle and cables inside. If rain is forecast I cover it. It’s pretty close to polar aligned which I don’t want to mess with (though I should fine tune it again I suppose). 
 

A/C units sit out in direct sun all the time and do pretty well overall. Capacitors fail occasionally. Lots of industrial equipment in use 24 hours a day though critical control panels might have instrument air piped in to cabinets to keep dry/cooler. Not sure, but I don’t think mil spec ICs or other components are used though I could be wrong. We used a lot of cooling for computers (luckily humans could also benefit from the chillers - LOL). I’ve had hard drives that lost their way when either too hot or cold but most stuff does well if designed to disperse generated heat.

YMMV

 

Mike Spooner

Since my mount was not build to withstand extreme heat as well as being built on the cheap - why take a chance. 

 

As I've said, I've had this mount for going on 19 years. Why treat it badly now.

[Mike Spooner]

Since my mount was not build to withstand extreme heat as well as being built on the cheap - why take a chance. 

 

As I've said, I've had this mount for going on 19 years. Why treat it badly now.

Makes great sense, actually. Today it’s becoming difficult if not impossible to find parts even if equipment is repairable. Plastics (and a lot of soft materials) take a real beating with our extreme UV. I’ve always liked to tinker with things but even I get frustrated with engineered obsolescence and inferior materials. I certainly like to have things last, I just was pointing out that durability is possible but of course not guaranteed in extreme climates. 

[NTR180]

If you keep things out of direct sunlight they seem to do pretty well.  My friend kept his C14 in an un-airconditioned dome here in Tucson for many years without any problem.  I got my CPC 1100 and dome from a gentleman who'd had it for over a decade.  Never brought the scope indoors.  Fires up every time.  What did me in was the packrats.  Dang things chewed through my power cord.  Replaced it and works like a dream.  

[12BH7]

My garage is situated where it gets the direct afternoon to evening sun. The only place I can put my scope is near the front corner where the direct sun would hit it for at least an hour or two during June - Sept.

 

The air in the SHADE is 108°, but in the direct sun it's 125°.  I have measured it.

Edited by 12BH7, 15 June 2025 - 09:33 AM.

[csrlice12]

105f in the shade....sounds like a Godzilla movie marathon day for me.

[12BH7]

105f in the shade....sounds like a Godzilla movie marathon day for me.

Yep, it's 111° today and it will hit 115° in the garage by the time I go to out there to exercise.

 

But it's the DRY heat. Kind of like how mummies are made.

[rfcooley]

One of the problems with massed produced mounts are they are just that. What ever is inexpensive, what ever is easiest to put together quickly, what ever can move through QC quickest and what turns the best profits is what will be used. For years the US automotive industry practiced "design obsolescence".  Why?  Because they wanted you to by a new car every 3 to 5 years. Their goal was to keep you in the loop and sell cars, sell their product.  Celestron and other massed produced products have adopted the same ideology. But understood that price point had to be reasonable and affordable At one point in my adventure I was a die hard Celestron fan of both their telescopes and mounts and Celestron was the only mount I would purchase. First, because it was affordable. The price was reasonable and at the very top end of what I could afford. However, my opinion has changed about  Celestron mounts. I will not buy one unless I am not concerned with the longevity of the mount or it's obsolescence.  The Celestron mounts are okay for entry level but I don't expect them to be permanent. They will either fail or they will become obsolete so you can't buy parts to fix it.

 

Second, I wanted to get into astronomy. I wanted to "look at stuff".  My first tracking mount was a Celestron CG5. I was so proud of that mount. It was my mount. Celestron later on came out with the ASGT, which if I remember right had goto capability, and then the ADVGT and it had more bells and whistles and the price was a little more than I paid for my CG5. I sold the CG5 to a friend of mine to help finance a new ADVGT.  Not long after the release of the ADVGT parts for anything that it superseded it were becoming scarce.( this is when trouble soon began. I just didn't know it)  I had read that if you sent the ADVGT to a company called Deep Space products they could "Super Tune" the ADVGT. Off it went. I got it back in about a month or so and could not wait to try it out.  It worked wonderfully. I was doing victory dances around the mount. I used the ADVGT for a few years and it performed wonderfully as far has I was concerned. It spent some time in and out of this kind of weather. But, I didn't leave it in a car or did I put it outside without a cover on it. During wet weather I'd put a large contractors trash bag over it and wrap that with a solar blanket, shinny side out during hot weather. I didn't have the weatherproof covers like we have today. Which in itself these covers are pretty amazing.

 

Temperatures here in Nevada range between single digits into triple digits year around. I have experienced 3" of snow on the 4th of July and temperatures as hot has triple digits teens and 120s when I worked in Death Valley. What destroys the plastics, paint, wood, electronics is exposure to the spectrum of UV light, not necessarily the temperatures. Things left in the Nevada sun without being shaded or covered will deteriorate quickly.  Average elevation of Nevada is around 5500 feet. Higher altitude, less atmosphere are major contributors to this deterioration because more UV is present. Next time your up at Lake Tahoe during sun-shinny weather take your shirt off and see how fast you get sunburned. We recognized that things were most damaged when left out without a cover or just in the shade and it happened quickly. Time for some experimentation.  

 

The preceding reasons were why the observatory director decided to try these experiments with some of the equipment. (He's a physics guy). So we selected some OTAs and mounts to put out originally for only a year. But, after the year everything appeared to be in good shape and decided to leave the stuff out for another year. It was about 3/4 way into the 2nd year that we encountered some vandalism to the equipment and decided to bring the equipment in and bring a close to the experiment.  We decided that it wasn't the weather per se that caused the problems. Because we have sun, wind, sand, rain and snow that cycle through out the year. So what was it that caused the deterioration of things left out in the weather.  We came up with the UV theory. UV is always very high here in Nevada and it will deteriorate almost anything.

 

 Long experiment made short. The OTAs all work fine. The  newer Celestron mount went south with electronic issues. Whether it was a result of it's time on the deck or just went bad is unknown. It started acting up shortly after we ended the experiment.  I have yet to get into to see if it is repairable.

 

Clear Skies Never Lose the Wonder

 

RF

 

 

[12BH7]

One of the problems with massed produced mounts are they are just that. What ever is inexpensive, what ever is easiest to put together quickly, what ever can move through QC quickest and what turns the best profits is what will be used. For years the US automotive industry practiced "design obsolescence".  Why?  Because they wanted you to by a new car every 3 to 5 years. Their goal was to keep you in the loop and sell cars, sell their product.  Celestron and other massed produced products have adopted the same ideology. But understood that price point had to be reasonable and affordable At one point in my adventure I was a die hard Celestron fan of both their telescopes and mounts and Celestron was the only mount I would purchase. First, because it was affordable. The price was reasonable and at the very top end of what I could afford. However, my opinion has changed about  Celestron mounts. I will not buy one unless I am not concerned with the longevity of the mount or it's obsolescence.  The Celestron mounts are okay for entry level but I don't expect them to be permanent. They will either fail or they will become obsolete so you can't buy parts to fix it.

 

Second, I wanted to get into astronomy. I wanted to "look at stuff".  My first tracking mount was a Celestron CG5. I was so proud of that mount. It was my mount. Celestron later on came out with the ASGT, which if I remember right had goto capability, and then the ADVGT and it had more bells and whistles and the price was a little more than I paid for my CG5. I sold the CG5 to a friend of mine to help finance a new ADVGT.  Not long after the release of the ADVGT parts for anything that it superseded it were becoming scarce.( this is when trouble soon began. I just didn't know it)  I had read that if you sent the ADVGT to a company called Deep Space products they could "Super Tune" the ADVGT. Off it went. I got it back in about a month or so and could not wait to try it out.  It worked wonderfully. I was doing victory dances around the mount. I used the ADVGT for a few years and it performed wonderfully as far has I was concerned. It spent some time in and out of this kind of weather. But, I didn't leave it in a car or did I put it outside without a cover on it. During wet weather I'd put a large contractors trash bag over it and wrap that with a solar blanket, shinny side out during hot weather. I didn't have the weatherproof covers like we have today. Which in itself these covers are pretty amazing.

 

Temperatures here in Nevada range between single digits into triple digits year around. I have experienced 3" of snow on the 4th of July and temperatures as hot has triple digits teens and 120s when I worked in Death Valley. What destroys the plastics, paint, wood, electronics is exposure to the spectrum of UV light, not necessarily the temperatures. Things left in the Nevada sun without being shaded or covered will deteriorate quickly.  Average elevation of Nevada is around 5500 feet. Higher altitude, less atmosphere are major contributors to this deterioration because more UV is present. Next time your up at Lake Tahoe during sun-shinny weather take your shirt off and see how fast you get sunburned. We recognized that things were most damaged when left out without a cover or just in the shade and it happened quickly. Time for some experimentation.  

 

The preceding reasons were why the observatory director decided to try these experiments with some of the equipment. (He's a physics guy). So we selected some OTAs and mounts to put out originally for only a year. But, after the year everything appeared to be in good shape and decided to leave the stuff out for another year. It was about 3/4 way into the 2nd year that we encountered some vandalism to the equipment and decided to bring the equipment in and bring a close to the experiment.  We decided that it wasn't the weather per se that caused the problems. Because we have sun, wind, sand, rain and snow that cycle through out the year. So what was it that caused the deterioration of things left out in the weather.  We came up with the UV theory. UV is always very high here in Nevada and it will deteriorate almost anything.

 

 Long experiment made short. The OTAs all work fine. The  newer Celestron mount went south with electronic issues. Whether it was a result of it's time on the deck or just went bad is unknown. It started acting up shortly after we ended the experiment.  I have yet to get into to see if it is repairable.

 

Clear Skies Never Lose the Wonder

 

RF

Thank you for that post..

 

As I've already mentioned, I've been leaving my 8" OTA out for decades with no problems. It's the cheapish mount and even cheaper electronics that are the reason for concern.  Mentioning replacement parts, Meade's are starting to become a sourcing problem.  

 

If I could take the OTA off I would just bring the mounts electronics inside and leave the rest out. 

[DirtyRod]

Survived the first 110+ day of the summer. Is it crazy to be happy to see 99?
 

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[Don W]

Note to all:

 

Arizona has many different temperatures. Yes the Phoenix area is very hot. They are low elevation and the heat gets trapped in the valley. 
 

But in the high desert (Cottonwood, Sedona around 3,000-4000’) temps are around 10 degrees cooler year round. Flagstaff is 40 miles north and has snow on the ground until March or later. The city is at 7,000’. I understand the area near Tuscon is also cooler than Phoenix but I haven’t been there yet.

[12BH7]

I should add to those that are not from the area. The heat is only part of the equation. The biggest factor is the sun. That is where most people get into trouble around here.

 

Last night I went out and it was still around 100°.  But with a light breeze and the sun off your back its actually pleasant. 

 

And going up north to hike is not a good idea. I'm told that they have the sun up there as well. 

[dustyc]

Survived the first 110+ day of the summer. Is it crazy to be happy to see 99?
 

Yeah, 99 actually feels "cool" (at least in the shade).  

I think dust is a real concern around equipment (mirrors, gears, sensors, etc.)

[DirtyRod]

Yeah, 99 actually feels "cool" (at least in the shade).  

I think dust is a real concern around equipment (mirrors, gears, sensors, etc.)

Big time. Every so often I go blow the dust off and I wipe my gear down every month or so and I'm amazed I don't get a lot of dust motes in my images. 

[CharLakeAstro]

Interesting to read about the various climates and effects on gear.

Curious what you mean by "up north"?

 

I should add to those that are not from the area. The heat is only part of the equation. The biggest factor is the sun. That is where most people get into trouble around here.

 

Last night I went out and it was still around 100°.  But with a light breeze and the sun off your back its actually pleasant. 

 

And going up north to hike is not a good idea. I'm told that they have the sun up there as well. 

[Bill Weir]

Interesting to read about the various climates and effects on gear.

Curious what you mean by "up north"?

Hey north is all relative. I hear folks from Ontario refer to The Sault as “The North” yet it’s a full 2° latitude further south than where I live in Canada and I’m as far south as you can get around here.

[12BH7]

Interesting to read about the various climates and effects on gear.

Curious what you mean by "up north"?

The entire Phoenix area is in a valley. So when we refer to going north we usually mean that we are going to Sedona, Flagstaff or Payson. Even though it's about 125 miles north and at a slightly higher elevation, it's only about 10 degrees cooler.  Except for Flagstaff which is 20 degrees cooler, but further north and higher up. 

[Mike Spooner]

Hottest official temperature in Flagstaff was 97F. One year (1978-79 I think) the warmest night time temp for the year was 58F. I had a flat coming home from town one August evening and nearly had hypothermia walking a mile to my house - didn’t have a jack in the car (new from dealer!)  My fault I guess for not looking before driving off the lot - it had a spare tire. LOL.

 

sorry for digressing. It was 113 here today with 4% humidity. Breezy… like a convection oven. Evenly toasted at least.

 

Mike Spooner

[CharLakeAstro]

That's truth!

The furthest south point in Ontario (Point Pelee) is the same latitude as Redwood National Park in California

 

Hey north is all relative. I hear folks from Ontario refer to The Sault as “The North” yet it’s a full 2° latitude further south than where I live in Canada and I’m as far south as you can get around here.

[12BH7]

sorry for digressing. It was 113 here today with 4% humidity. Breezy… like a convection oven. Evenly toasted at least.

 

Mike Spooner

I was exercising in my garage today and the digital thermometer was 113.7°. I had a 12" fan on me but with the hot wind was like standing in front of an open oven. But that was after I did about a hour of yard work trimming a tree. 

 

When I went to touch a metal handle in the garage it was almost too hot to hold. Think about heating your scopes most sensitive parts in that for a few years. 

[huggies]

Seems this issue is raised every summer. My scopes have been outside almost entirely for the last 3 years.  Plenty of 115+ days. Have had no issues with either setup. I do keep them covered, gizmo, during the day and usually move them under my patio cover. Having worked electronics/avionics all my adult life, the heat doesn't really concern me. 

 

Note to other AZ astro peeps, I know some of you like to head up to Mt Ord for imaging. Be careful and prepared. Two teens recently murdered up there and no leads on the suspects. Kind of shocking really how little info has been released. 

 

Ray

[12BH7]

Seems this issue is raised every summer. My scopes have been outside almost entirely for the last 3 years.  Plenty of 115+ days. Have had no issues with either setup. I do keep them covered, gizmo, during the day and usually move them under my patio cover. Having worked electronics/avionics all my adult life, the heat doesn't really concern me. 

 

Note to other AZ astro peeps, I know some of you like to head up to Mt Ord for imaging. Be careful and prepared. Two teens recently murdered up there and no leads on the suspects. Kind of shocking really how little info has been released. 

 

Ray

I did leave my scope in the hot garage for the first 10 years. The reason I'm taking it in now is to hopefully add more years to its life. it. I'm really not in a position to replace it.  At 12" and pushing 40 pounds, now you're looking at bookoo bucks mounts.  I'm more on the down side of the hobby as oppoesed to upping my expenses. 

 

I read about those two teens on Mt. Ord. I believe it was more of a body dump. I have hiked Mr. Ord several times over the last few weeks. I'm more concerned about the drunken hunters then killers.