Nexstar se4. Accessories ?

[KbrojoUSMC]

Looking to buy some accessories for my scope. Any suggestions.

[ronin]

No idea what you have but:

Dew shield,

8mm, 12mm and 25mm A-T Paradigm.

What do you power it from?

[KbrojoUSMC]

Just batteries right now. Going to get the power pack and ac adapter. And the celestron eye piece kit and Barlow.

[KbrojoUSMC]

I have a celestron nexstar se4

[ronin]

When I said "No idea what you have" I meant other then the 4SE and whatever came with it. :grin:

I did read the title and what you wrote, and am sat here laughing at the way I can manage to just get the wordihng wrong.

Not sure what is in the eyepiece and barlow kit but you will need the eyepieces to be biased towards the longer focal lengths. The focal length of the 4SE is long so short focal length eyepieces will be difficult to use and get a good image from. Too much magnification. That is why I said the 8mm and 12mm, actually at f/13 the 8mm may not be much use, so perhaps the 12mm and the 15mm.

So if the kit has eyepiece at the short lengths they are going to be of limited use.

Again owing to the long focal length a barlow is questionable, add a 2x barlow to a 15mm and the magnification is likely to be too much.

You will need a 32mm eyepiece in the kit - I have a similar Meade and a 32mm is required.

Also make sure the eyepieces are plossl's.

[sgazer]

I have the 4 se and it's great for lunar and planetary. Get a decent orthoscopic 3mm eyepiece for amazing crater views.

Forget deepsky visual, best thing you can do is stick a cheap dslr on it with a kit lens, take some 30s exposures and be amazed what it captures.

[KbrojoUSMC]

No deep space??

[Highburymark]

The eyepieces and diagonal supplied with the scope are the weak links. These are what I replaced first on my nexstar evolution - William Optics diagonal certainly improves images and is great value.

[Grogfish]

I would second Ronin on getting a 32mm Plossl. I've found it's the eyepiece I go to most on my Nexstar 4 for most deep space objects. (Maybe included in the Celestron set you're looking at - there's more than one on the market)

At the same time, sgazer is right that's it's a great planetary scope. I usually use something a bit longer though - around 9.7mm or maybe 6mm.

Good idea to get power tank of some kind, that really does make life easier.

I'd also recommend getting the SkySafari Plus app or similar for your smart phone, as it's great for getting the correct time/coordinates/height for the Nexstar set up and also saves faffing around in the dark with paper maps!

[russ.will]

I have the 4 se and it's great for lunar and planetary. Get a decent orthoscopic 3mm eyepiece for amazing crater views.

Forget deepsky visual, best thing you can do is stick a cheap dslr on it with a kit lens, take some 30s exposures and be amazed what it captures.

Utter cobblers. A 3mm EP in that scope will give 500x magnification and an exit pupil of less than 0.2mm - Utterly unusable and well beyond the magnification capabilities of the scope.

F15.3x0.8mm exit pupil (the smallest I'd go before you get into eyeball floater hell) gives an EP of approximately 12mm and 130x. Now you might push this to 150-160x and so a 9-10mm EP, but at focal lengths below this, the image might increase in size, but there will be no extra detail resolution. it will simply be larger, duller and fuzzier.

As for DSOs, well the 4" aperture does place certain limits, but brighter nebula (Orion, Dumbell and Ring) should all be accessible and so will Globs as they're coming into season. Rather than a 32mm Plossl with it's tiny apparent field of view, I'd suggest having a look a 24mm SWA (68-70deg AFOV) which will cover the same actual field of view, but against a darker sky because of the magnification and present it in a much larger image circle, which will be more engrossing.

Over here, we have the Maxvision 24mm SWA, which is a Meade Series 5000 24mm SWA, but at a much lower price. Don't get to say that to the colonies too often! Second hand, the Meade is a killer buy, but as a second best, the Paradigm EDII suggested above at 25mm is a great little EP. Agena Astro have it badged as a Starguider and it's exactly the same for a lot less.

Indeed, pick any of the Starguiders, 8mm and up and you'll be laughing. 8, 12, 18 and 25mm would be a great little set.

Russell

[Highburymark]

Have to agree with Russell - 8mm is absolute limit of magnification with these scopes

[Ags]

I've had my 4se for years, and these are the eyepieces I use.

Hyperion 24mm - indispensable finder EP.

Hyperion 17mm - main EP for viewing DSOs. Most often use it as a 13mm with fine tuning ring. With two fine tuning rings it becomes my best planetary 9mm.

TS HR 9mm - first EP I bought and a great purchase. Comfortable and sharp, good on all planets. Yes I have floater hell, but less magnification reveals no planetary detail (for my eyes). The image has to be large enough to examine, so you have to put up with the floaters, they come with a small scope. It also depends on the viewer: my eyes are like snow globes, but my partner sees no floaters with either the 9mm or 6mm.

TS HR 6mm - good on Mars and Saturn. Maybe I should have got the 7mm instead...

SR 4mm - bought it for a laugh, but it worked on Mars :-) As in, when Mars was less than 10 arcseconds, the SR4gave enough scale to make out some features, but the image looks like it has been mathematically smoothed - all you are doing is magnifying the scope's innate low resolution. It was a fun experiment, but definitely too much mag.

I've had pleasing views of various DSOs, like M27, M58, M13, M3 and especially all the lovely clusters in and around Auriga. I'm almost forgetting M81 and M82, the double cluster, Orion...

The scope is also good for double star work, better than a frac of equal aperture. I've split some tight doubles.