Breaking (accidentally, of course) some of your observing equipment ? I'm now going to set myself up for a curse by admitting that so far, I have not. I've come close (tripping on mount legs, dropping oculars on the grass, etc.) but so far the Gods of observing have been good to me. How about you? If you are willing to admit to a serious breakage, at least my sympathies are with you!

Mr Q 

 I took on a blind Border Collie (Star) a few years back and she knocked over the tripod with binoculars attached, it cost me three months and several hundred to repair. No good blaming Star, it was my fault for leaving the tripod out in the open.

I have been lucky up to this point! ::knocks on wood::

I have not yet dropped my Celestron refracting scope or any of the ocular pieces. I keep my telescope in the basement, and I'm usually nervous when I'm carrying it up the stairs. All it takes is one false step and I will be crying like a little school girl!!

Oh man yes!  I have been around for awhile so stuff happens in the dark.  When I was yet a lad I picked up a cheap refractor at a garage sale and thought it would be great to clean the objective lens with windex (ammonia D) and a paper towel.  As an adult many years later I was observing in the desert and dropped my 20mm Erfle occular in the dirt and small rocks. I found it by stepping on it.  At a star party some clod tripped over my tripod sending my 90mm Mak into the dirt.  It survived with a few scratches to the housing.  Overall though in some forty years of observing I have been lucky I think.

L

 

well, i broke my diagonal that came with my scope.  i've since repaired it to keep as a spare.  it was plastic.  other than that i haven't broken anything major. (more wood knocking here)

i'll tell you what i do more often than i would like to admit though:  after a patient time spent carefully polar aligning and getting everything just righti'll slew to my first targetlook at it for a minuteturn to go to my bag and get the cameraand trip on the tripod.

 

 My heart goes out to you with your mishaps. Some day something like that will happen to me, I'm sure. In a sick way, the damage posts seem a bit comical but that's what slapstick comedy is all about - funny as long as it happens to someone else! Hopefully, some more "damage" posts will come on and you won't feel as bad about your mishaps. Listen to me! HOPING to hear others' bad experiences? I didn't mean it THAT way, honest. Mr Q

I was trying to mount my FIRST scope (was actually my older brother's that I adopted...a 1977 Sears 50mm refractor) to my 6" Astroview for use as a guidescope. As I was mounting it I dropped it and knocked a collar out of the inside of it that I never was able to get back in there. After that the views were garbage.

I also deliberately took apart an 8x21 monocular to use as a focal reducer with some instructions I found on the web. It never worked. Everything was a smudgy piece of junk. Trashed 1 good monocular (at least it was a freebie from Marlboro for chain smoking... 

Well i have had some close calls, and droped an ep a few inches to concrete I was luckey though.(I am a klutz) Another time I droped an ep and managed to catch it but touched the optics a little. Ohh yeah and I learned that writing on wet paper with pen will bleed through and write on any paper below it. Even if it is your star atlis..

I would say I havent done to much damage for 7 months of owning a telescope

Accidents will happen, and I've had mine..  A few people here have already read about this one but I will tell you anyways.
I had got my Celestron C6R-GT all set up and ready to go on a day the sky was dry and clear. Something that is rare around here and I was ready to get some nice pictures. After I got the telescope placed on the mount I had noticed some gunk on one of the counter weights. How it got there I don't know. Assuring I had locked it down I removed the weight so I could clean it off.  I turned to the table that was only a few feet away and started cleaning the weight of real quick like. All of a sudden I heard a crunch, then turned to see the telescope had spun down and slammed into the tripod leg. I guess I didn't make sure it was locked tight enough.  I quickly went over to put it back up in the home position and checked everything on the telescope thoroughly. There was absolutely no damage to the telescope, whew!  However, it did jam the housing around the declination drive. It did damage the motor for the declination axis.  I can't describe the feelings and thoughts I was having at that time, but I can tell you they weren't the best.
I was able to repair the motor sufficiently enough to work with it as long as I took plenty of extra time performing drift test to ensure the polar alignment was dead on. That way I wouldn't have to make drift adjustments while manually guiding for images. The less I had to use that motor the better off I would be. 
Eventually I ended up buying a new motor anyways which cost about $165.00, if I remember correctly.  Nevertheless, I do consider myself very lucky. It could have done much more damage than that..  

 

Have A Nice __________ 

Being unfairly treated by the left wing loons here .

Worst I have done so far was to melt an eyepeice trying to project the sun,  didn't know that could happen.  It took a while before i realised the source of the burning smell was my telescope, fortunately just a 3" reflector.  After putting the telescope away, played a game of hide and seek with my daughter (almost 3 at the time), she "hid" under the telescope,  and of course the thing goes flying when I finally "found" her.   Worked just fine once I pushed the dents out, or as well as a department store 3" newtonian works...  the eyepeice was toast though.

No serious breakage, but a newbies first-scare:  In the early morning pre-dawn hours, barely awake and in a  pre-coffee state of mind.... I sheared my Telrad finder off the OTA when I lost my balance in the dark and grazed a door frame trying to rush out and set up for a quick, first-look at Saturn before I lost it to the approaching sunrise.  Fortunately, the Telrad mount was only sticky-tape mounted and the finder fell into a basket of laundry so nothing was actually broken.  The blow to the front end of the OTA jarred the secondary out of alignment, which gave me fits for a while until I could get that realignment fine-tuned. But, hey, it forced me to learn to collimate the secondary properly.

Had my first real scare tonight. I was carrying my scope separate from the base when I slipped on some ice... Luckily it was more of a slow motion fall than my legs flying out from under me so I was able to choose how I fell. I ended up landing on my butt/hip with the 50 Lb scope landing on my upper chest. I just purchases this scope a little while ago so I was holding on to this baby for dear life. Fortunately the only casualty was my cell phone that was in my pocket, the front glass over the LCD screen is smashed. The weird thing about this happening was last night I received a phone call from my mother who had fallen on the ice getting out of the car. I took her to the hospital and spent my entire friday night (7 hours) while she got a cast. Can't wait for summer...

It was late and real dark, I was pretty tired as well which never helps. Anyways, I was going to my bag to get my 10mm ep, in a rush/scramble (which I won't do again) I grabbed my bag (not designed for equipment in the first place) and as I quickly open it, I must have lifted it a touch too so it slingshots straight up about 8ft. Then the wind caught it causing it to bounce off the bed of my truck. I don't know how or why.... but it works fine. I was sure I destroyed it.

Ok, I have one. 

I was going to check my collimation before taking my scope out.  I grabbed my collimation cap and placed into the draw tube only to have it fall straight through and go bouncing down the tube towards the primary!!!  I wasn't paying attention and had picked up an old moon filter instead of the cap.  Luckily it didn't actually hit the mirror, or if it did, didn't do any damage.

hahaha good topic

Actually my latest fiasco was but alittle over a month ago. While viewing the 1st Quarter moon last month I was using my binoviewers, nosepiece and my Celestron 80. Well, as I was finishing up, I loosened the setscrews for the BV's that held the apparatus in place to the diagonal. Just at that point my wife had called me so I went in to see what she wanted. When I came back out, I totally forgot that the setscrew was only semi-tightened. I lifted the tripod / telescope assembly up a few inches off the ground in order to clear the threshold at the doorway. Suddenly, "SMASH" the BV's fell from a height of 6+ feet onto a cherrywood table in the office. I was able to salvage both ep's as well as the nosepiece. But th BV was toast.

 In the twenty-someodd years I've been seriously observing, nothing catastrophic has happened yet (thank God!)  But I've had some heart-stopper moments, one of them just recently!

 Around 16 or so years ago, I had a homebrew 4" apo refractor on a modified dob mount.  It was humble-looking, but performed quite well.  I had two cats at the time, and they decided they were going to get into a wild hairball of a tussle, in the livingroom where I had the scope set up in the corner. I watched, helplessly, as I saw the OTA go arching toward the floor!  Keep in mind, the objective was actually "borrowed" from a vintage aerial camera...between the glass in the triplet, and the solid metal cell, the objective alone weighed in excess of 15 pounds!  Don't ask me how, but when it hit the wall, the wood mount actually absorbed most of the damage.  It broke, but there wasn't a scratch on the scope!  I very nearly had two stuffed cats tho.

Just last week, I had ordered a new 80mm short-tube refractor for a grab-n-go scope.  It had just arrived and I was setting it up, when my elderly mother came over to visit.  Mom is all but completely blind, but still very independent!  We were talking while I set the new scope up on the tripod and making sure all the goodies that were supposed to come with it were included.   Not paying much attention, I barely noticed when she stood up from the sofa across the room from me and headed my direction to hand me something.  I was jostled out of my concentration when I heard a solid "thunk" followed by "OUCH!"  Mom had "discovered" the new tripod and scope...with her foot!

Her reaction was priceless..."That wasn't here before, was it?"  In stunned disbelief, I somehow stammered, "No Ma, it just got here.  Sorry."

Other than a stubbed toe, I'm glad to say there was no further damage. 

I just received my LX-200 with car power adapter cord. I thought of everything I could to be safe with my new "Baby". Only thing is I tripped over the cord after warning my two buddies not to. No damage,but I knew I had to do something different. Next night out I placed three solar powered lights in a row for runway lights. What a joke. They caused nothing but observing problems. I quickly pulled them up,continued observing until my friend did catch it again. Luckily the cord has a separation point and it disconnected! I am now using two of my wife's 2ft. by 7ft. throw rugs out of the house. I also loosely velcro tape the cord to the closest tripod leg to help take slack out. Two very close calls. Now I just have to watch for the carpet.(and of course replace the ones I stole)

So far, no scope mishaps.  I will, however, sacrafice my body by making sure the 12" Meade LX200 falls on me rather than the deck and I expect anyone who helps me carry the scope to do the same!!!

The only close call I've had went something like this.  After observing off our upper deck for years, I became tired of the neighbor's mega porch lights.  So I built an 8'x8'x7' PVC enclosure which I hung a heavy tarp all the way around with a 2 foot overlap so I could get inside and then close up the light hole!  We were having our first star party that night so I get the scope all set up inside the new enclosure and go get the wife to show her how I need her to guide our guests in.  As I was explaining the possible tripping points for our guests and how we must warn them ahead of entering, yup you guessed it I TRIPPED and caught myself about an inch from plowing all 250lbs of me into the scope!  That resulted in a very sore lower back.    No worries though, I've learned my lesson and am now down to 211 lbs as of this morning!

Ha ha! yes, but luckily no breakage....

I was playing around after having found a rather nice Bausch & Lomb microscope eyepiece. With a little creativity (black insulation tape) it fit snugly inside the 1.25" tube from a useless, scratched & dirty diagonal mirror that came with a telescope I found at a garage sale. With this combo I could use the eyepiece in the Galileo 3.5" Newtonian found at a nearby goodwill store - keen observers  will note my committment to cheapskate astronomy  ). Rather carelessly, I had made no provision for the small diameter of the assembly, and after a couple of good test runs, popped it in the focusser and let go absent mindedly. It rattled down the draw tube, clipped the secondary mirror as it turned the corner and hit the primary with a resounding thud! The air turned blue.... As if by miracle, there was not a mark on either mirror and the eyepiece was fine - it is now part of a home made finderscope for yet another goodwill treasure find.

This is why we have starter scopes

Be careful out there,

Ed