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New Christmas telescope celestron 6se


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I purchased a new celestron 6se telescope for me and my oldest son 17 (who wants to go to school for astrophysics/astronomy).  He'll prolly end up working at starbucks lol. Anyway I can not get it to 3 star align.  Any tips? Should I use 2 star auto?  Also can you over tighten and break the focus knob because I could not even focus on the moon, but it was sort of behind a tree. 

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your focusing issue may be down to the travel in the 6se.

A scope like yours may take 30 or more turns to achieve focus.

Try winding it clockwise as far as you can then wind the knob back anti clockwise and see if that works.

Im sure someone will be along soon with some alignment advice.

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Do the 2 star align, keep hearing of problems with the 3 star.

I suspect the 3 star align works but that an applied tolerance is too tight so it says Fail too mant times.

Best to level as much as you can concerning the mount. The scope should compensate for tilt in either direction but it is better if it is minimised so getting the thing fairly level is beneficial.

Not sure on the initial start position on 6SE's, may not have a specific one defined. If it has then it will be either Level the mount then level the main scope and point it North (Meade), or, Level the mount and then point the scope at Polaris. Check the manual for any indication.

Data depends on where you are, so if you have doubts then post your location and several options will appear. Most use the Custom site as this tends to be more accurate.

As has been said it is an SCT and they tend to have lots of turns when it comes to focus, however you may be at the end of travel so don't go mad.

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I have a nexstar 6SE and ther is no problem with 3 star alignment (for me) .

The first thing is to make sure your red dot finder is correctly aligned with your telescope.  The easiest way is to do this during the day.  Using a low powered eyepiece point the 'scope at a prominent object as far away as possible (tree, church towe, pylon etc) and centre it in the eyepiece, Then check the red dot finer is on the object.  Check through the eyepiece again to make sure you have not jogged the 'scope and adjust until both are aligned. 

If the 'scope is where you will be using it then it will be ok, but if you move the telescope to a dark site for viewing later you will need to check again by moving the scope until you can see a bright star in the red dot finder then look through the eypiece.  If the star is centred then all is well, if not, centre star in the eyepiece before adjusting the red dot finder.  Then start the 3 star align.

If you are close to a city in the data base set to that but if you are more than about 20 miles away it is better to find your location (I used google earth) and set to that.  Make sure you set the time to the correct time zone and daylight saving or UT.  Then just do the 3 star align choosing trhee stars as far apart as possibly.

I hope this helps.

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Something else to consider - definitely do the align with the red dot finder.  If you try and use the scopes main optics for star aligning you can align on fainter objects - the scopes computer is based only on bright objects.  Try not to make those bright objects planets and try and get the 3 objects as far apart as possible in both altitude and azimuth (ie up and down and left and right).

I had a Nextsar 4SE which uses the same gubbins to work out its position.  It was mostly reliable but only so long as you never used planets and kept the stars for alignment as far apart as possible and used the red dot for the alignment.  My first night out I used the main optics with a cross hair eyepiece and it wouldn't do a thing.  I suspect its database for alignment is geared only for naked eye objects (ie using only the red dot) also check date and time as already mentioned its in US format.

Also use an external power tank rather than the onboard batteries (I assume the 6 has batteries under the hood like the 4).  The system will kill the batteries so an external tank is a must bot for long viewing and for making sure the computer has enough whoomph - most problems with GoTo mounts of any hue is insufficient go-juice.

Once you get used to it the Nexstars are really nice and many people consider the 6 to be the best of the type.

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Ensure that daylight savings hour is turned off otherwise the mount will be completely off.

Also, to do a good 3 star alignment, you need to pick stars that are as far apart as possible and preferably in a triangular formation. Pick a star in say north, south and east, but make sure that they are not all within the same plane, i.e. say one is at 20 degrees above horizon, the other 70 degrees and the 3rd say 40.

Don't mind the numbers I put down, it's just an example, but it does help to follow this alignment procedure.

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I had a 6SE and I agree with the points above. A 3 star align problem.

The main issues are enetering the time, date and location correclty.

Also I know it sounds stupid but make sure you have the OTA in the dovetail the right way round. Look at the manual pics. Also ensure the batteries are fully charged if you are using batteries. If they are run down GOTO becomes erratic.

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