Celestron: Genius Gone
Companies are often founded by genius, men who have great visions and make their dreams come true, often changing the world for the better in the process. Tom Johnson was one of those great genius men who changed the world.
Tom Johnson was a genius who founded Celestron with his pioneering spirit and vision, and with a brilliant creative framework put into forward motion a revolutionary new method of mass producing an affordable Schmidt Cassegrain telescope design, allowing millions of amateur astronomers to pursue their passion for astronomy. But what happened along the way? What happened on March 13th, 2012 when Mr. Johnson died? Often times the common workers cannot come close to the genius capacity of the founder and the vision is lost to the winds and drifting sand of empty eternity. Such is the case with Celestron that designed one of the most spectacular telescope mounts in the world, making telescopes as large as the 14-inch edge HD rock steady in performance. But wait. Exactly what happened along the way in the effort to make an almighty buck, save a penny, and cheapen a fantastic design? What happened when Celestron sold out manufacturing to a country who could care less about quality or the telescope vision?
I'll tell you what happened. The new CGX/L mount has a design that calls for aluminum. Pure aluminum. To save a penny, the manufacturer secretly pitched in cheap ferrous slag, to pad the pure aluminum making it impure, and magnetic, and no longer conforming to the original design. Fake Celestron had become something else, cutting corners, and cheapening the vision and dream that master Tom Johnson had worked so hard on achieving. Like a fool, I purchased the CGX/L telescope mount, a 14-inch EdgeHD OTA, and ALL the accessories. I was totally unaware of the lurking nightmare hiding inside the telescope mount - the monster of pure non-magnetic aluminum that was ferrous slag filled like a garbage dump, causing the telescope mount to become a silent war of irradiating EMI/RFI, a jamming device of your worst nightmare.
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The pure non-magnetic aluminum in the Celestron CGX/L telescope mount
design was contaminated with ferrus magnetic slag gunk that wrecks havoc
with Celestron's accessories including GPS, WIFI, remote, and a pool of
other expensive accessories. Celestron ported manufacturing to another
country that cut corners to save a penny at full disregard to astronomers
buying the ill-fated accessories. |
So what? Who cares you say? Consider this. The mount is worse than the Bermuda Triangle, spewing forth powerful random magnetic lines of force, driving compasses and sensitive electronic devices wild and crazy. It stops wifi signals, blocks wireless internet, causes erroneous GPS, makes compasses have faulty readings, inclinometers fail, blocks radio signals, interrupts cell phone communications, makes planetarium software go awry, and results in telescope remote control software becoming dangerously random with the massive mount and counterweights swinging in unpredictable directions. It kills the sensitive results of electronic pointing devices. In a nutshell, it makes all those accessories useless.
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A common malpractice of adding impure ferrous junk to
pure aluminum cast to save money and cheapen the product
introduces unwanted effects like magnetism.
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After spending over $20,000.00 with Celestron, I have a heap of useless trash, a GPS module that does not work, a WiFi box that fails, a planetarium program with a telescope mount control program that fails, a magnetic north finder that fails, a phone with failed internet, failed apps, and the list goes on and on. While numerous people have complained about the same problem, Celestron tells each person, this is the first we heard of that and then offers no solution. Is there a solution? Unless you have one of the world's largest degaussing machines to strip the massive mount of all its deadly strong magnetism, the remaining electronic technology devices sold to make the telescope easier to use will be useless and functionally dead.
