And_yB

Thank you all. Very much appreciated. These were exactly what I was after.

Thanks. Appreciate the pointers

This may seem a bit of a silly question, apologies if this is obvious to many, but is there a daily/weekly bulletin anywhere that points in the direction of what is happening in the night sky this week/month/year, that shouldn't be missed. I'm sure there must be a news board etc.

I bought a 6SE a couple of months ago off Amazon as a Black Friday offer. It was my first scope, as I will soon be going into retirement and I wanted something to keep my mind alive, and astronomy has always niggled away at me. Overall, although my experience and frame of reference is very narrow, I have been very pleased with the purchase. I have spent many hours of study, and despite a few teething problems in setting the scope up to work with Wifi and under the control of a Laptop, I seem to finally be there. Unfortunately, having faced endless issues both with the Mac, and the Wifi adapter, neither of which resulted in a successful outcome, I have now replaced the Mac with a dedicated MS Laptop and use a cable to connect to the mount. I have also now settled on using Stellarium as my preferred Astro program having experienced endless problems trying to get SN to work. I have added to my small portfolio of equipment, a Celestron PowerBank, a mains power adapter, a zoom eyepiece, and a 2x Barlow. If I wanted to be at all picky. I have found the problems encountered at times difficult to resolve due to the often quite complex nature of some of the solutions be offered by clearly 'best intentioned'... but somewhat geeky.. people who are much further along this journey than me. Although I'm not a complete Luddite, and can work my way through a number of tech issues, I really did start to become quite frustrated at times in the first month when one problem just seemed to lead to another. That all said, I feel like I am there now and please don't get me wrong as I am in no way finding fault with the many people who have provided invaluable assistance, without whom the 6SE may have turned up on eBay... joking of course... a little. I wish you well.

Hi all. I have recently bought a Celestron SE and installed SN8 SE. I am using a MacBook Air running the Big Sur iOS, having recently updating the iOS from Catalina. Prior to the Big Sur upgrade and despite having great difficulty in getting my computer to recognise a cable connection using a Mini USB/USB cable, I managed to get it going finally using a Prolific driver that then provided an option that worked in the Scope Configuration window of SN8. Now having upgraded to Big Sur, the USB connection option has dissapeard, and despite reloading the Driver as before, I am still unable to see an option in config that worked before. If anyone can provide some words of wisdom or guidance, that would be very much appreciated. I have become very frustrated with this issue.

I bought a Scope about 3 weeks ago. I am a complete beginner. Always had an interest, but never the time to really get into it. I will now as I move quickly towards retirement with excitement/alarm. With regard to the Forum, I have been particularly pleased to find a pool of knowledge like this. All of my questions have been very well received and responded to Although there are many readers who probably think 'what's he saying' or 'that's a stupid question' they have been polite enough to assist or stay quiet. Please keep up the good work all admin staff. When I am in a position to offer something more constructive I will. Have a good Christmas, and a safe and happy 2021 Andy

Thanks Doug. I'm starting to think that you are right. Although the wifi module that I received as a replacement is occasionally connecting, it is very intermittent, and I'm now leaning to simply using the Nexstar+ hand controller or control directly from the MacBook using a hard cable and SN8 software that came with the Scope purchase.

Hi Brian, going by what you have said I guess we are both fairly new to this and learning at about the same rate. I'm not sue if I've said already - I have in other threads - but I'm getting quite close to retirement and this will probably be my main hobby for a few years, along with my continued passion for golf, and my house in the mountains of Spain give me great opportunities, both when considering light pollution and weather. With regard to your equipment, I'm not really sure what you have at the moment. No doubt I will get to know more over coming months and years. As for my set-up, it was actually my brother who is into ornithology who gave me a steer. He knew I was aiming to do this and pointed me in the direction of a 6SE that was a 'black Friday' deal. Admittedly I've bought a few other things as well, and I'm fairly sure there are few things under the Christmas tree that will make my Christmas morning and keep me busy for a few days. Other than the ongoing issue of loading the Celestron Firmware Manager (CFM) to my Mac, which appears to be problematic still, most of my initial issues have now been resolved. I can now control the mount using a cable connected to the Mac and using the Starry Nights 8 software, that I intend on spending quite a bit of time learning about. Ive also now managed to establish some connectivity using a replacement wifi module where the last one was either faulty or suffered from interference issues with existing house wifi sources... where there are many. Anyway Brian... happy to talk through any issues/problems. Not a nerd... but an energetic enthusiast

Well... I've had a good day, of sorts. Got the new wifi dongle... and connection to SkyPortal was established. Not particularly reliable I have to say. Connections dropped frequently, and I can only put it down to the Tsunami of wifi signals jumping around my house in the form of Alexas, Wifi lightbulbs and sockets, and Sonos speakers. I'm guessing it will improve when I move outside. Also on a positive note, having watched a few youtube vids and downloading a few drivers ,I have now managed to connect my Starry Night 8 via cable to the scope, and all is good. I go to bed this evening with a positive feeling about the day.... I even watched the movie 'Clara' on Prime with a glass of wine in my hand. My stars are aligned

Thanks Shimrod. I am in Europe so that may be a factor. I have a replacement module arriving today so we will see later if there was a component failure in the previous one, or a wider issue that I need to resolve. Fingers crossed. I really want to exploit the ease of use that comes with connectivity to an iOS device .

Hey Brian I've recently bought a 6SE and I'm having no end of problems trying to set it up to work with my MacBook. If you are happy for me to speak with you and pick you brains, I would appreciate it. The main issue I'm having is installing the CFM and updating the Firmware. Regards Andy

I've recently bought a celestron WiFi module to use with my newly purchased 6SE. After about a week of trying to get it to connect to any one of my numerous IOS devices unsuccessfully, I've given up and assumed it must be faulty and sent it back and asked for a replacement. Although I hope the new one will work when it arrives, I must admit that my confidence is not high, particularly having read a few reviews. Is there an alternative dongle that can be used... or am I stuck with the celestron module as the only means of establishing some wifi connectivity and control for the 6SE using an IOS/Mac device? Help appreciated . Andy

Shimrod. Thanks for that. I will have another go tomorrow. Have to say this is getting pretty frustrating. Appreciate your pointers and recommendations

Bought a 6SE a few weeks ago and continuing to have some difficulty in getting it set up to work with my MacBook Air. Attempted to get some support from Celestron, and I have to say that other than one email pointing to a Youtube vid, it's not been good. Was on the phone to them, on hold, for an hour this evening, before I left a call-back request and heard nothing, and despite several emails from me I seem to be getting nowhere. All a bit frustrating... I will persist, but although it's not the most expensive gear on the market, its' not the cheapest either, and quite frankly I expected a little more. Bottom line... trying to update the CFM. The download to the Mac won't install. The celestron Wifi won't connect... so I've sent that back, and I'm awaiting a replacement. Although I'm not a tech wizard, I'm not a tech idiot either. I seem to be spending a lot of time trying to get this problem resolved. Reading that back, I sound a very difficult person... I'm really not, honest Apologies .... venting a bit. I blame Covid

Oh if life was so simple. Ive just tried to connect using a cable mini-usb to USB cable from the Hand-control to the MAC. I then tried to 'configure' connection within the app. Connection options did not include USB so I tried both the TCP, and the Bluetooth options, as indicated in the screen shot. Both failed to connect to the scope. Any ideas... anyone ?