Celestron NexStar 4SE impressions and first light write-up

[Baz6170]

Hi all

I’ve just bought a Celestron NexStar 4SE as my first scope, and thought I’d post a write-up of my impressions of the scope, and my first night’s observing with it.

Tripod

Really well made and good quality, very easy to assemble and adjust, nice addition of the accessories tray (which also doubles as a ‘lock’ to keep the tripod legs fixed in place outwardly). A small bubble level is supplied for levelling the tripod, but I found it easier to use a short DIY spirit level; levelling was easy via telescopic adjustment of the three legs. Once levelled, the tripod was really stable, and in use, the only ‘wobble’ I got was when adjusting the focusing knob on the scope.

Mount

I was surprised how heavy it was, but again really well made and easy to attach to the tripod (3 thumbscrews). It’s a fully motorised alt-az goto mount, meaning that once the scope is aligned to the sky, it can find objects for you via the NexStar system. The mount arm houses the NexStar hand control; I didn’t expect the hand control to be so thin and light when unhooked from the arm, but it’s well bolted together so didn’t feel fragile. The biggest problem I found with the hand control was when stowing it back on the mount; the curly cable that attaches the control to the mount isn’t easy to push into place so that it stays put within the arm, meaning when you hook up the hand control, because the control is so light, it doesn’t have any weight to hold the cable back. A minor niggle. The mount uses 8 AA batteries for power, however as I was observing from home I opted to buy and use an AC-DC mains PSU as I’ve read that batteries don’t last long in this mount.

OTA

This looks and feels excellent; it’s very well made, with good quality materials. It’s a 4” (102mm) Maksutov-Cassegrain sealed scope with a focal length of 52.17” (1325mm) and an f stop of f/13. Collimation was spot-on straight out of the box, which is a plus as I’m led to believe that collimating a mak scope isn’t easy! I like the fact that the scope has both a diagonal eyepiece barrel on the top (1.25”) and a camera adaptor on the end, with a control to flip the mirror ie switch between the two, making it easy to align an object and then be able to photograph it straight off (although with this scope not using an EQ mount, or being powerful enough to see many DSO’s, long exposure photography is not recommended). The red spot finderscope was simple to attach to the OTA and really easy to align, although it took me a while (being a perfectionist!) to be satisfied that it was properly aligned. The finderscope has a control to vary the brightness of the red dot, but I found even the lowest setting (dimmest spot) to be a bit bright. Again this is a minor niggle, and is probably just me being picky.

NexStar SkyAlign

I used the 3-star alignment option, and it worked first time with no problems at all : ) As a beginner, I’m really impressed with this system, as with little knowledge of the night sky you can get the scope (via the Tour option) to show you a range of objects currently viewable, meaning that if you’ve got nice clear skies and little light pollution, you can see multiple objects on your first night out. My only gripe of the NexStar system would be that even the highest slew speed (9) of the mount takes a while to move between objects if they aren’t right next to each other – no issues with the accuracy though, every object I chose to view appeared in the EP more or less dead centre. I tested the accuracy further by manually slewing to look at Mizar and Alcor in Ursa Major, saved the position, slew the scope in the opposite direction and then selected my saved position, which the scope returned to without a hitch : ) Tracking also worked perfectly, and the motor drives were barely audible in use.

Observing

It was quite cloudy on my first night out with the scope, and I was observing from my back garden which has high fences/trees around it, so I wasn’t able to view any planets as they were below my viewpoint. I also had a fair amount of street light pollution, but negated a fair bit of it by using a Sky-Watcher light pollution filter. I stuck it out for about an hour and luckily the cloud cleared enough for me to get some great views of the moon; as a beginner I tried a range of EPs (the Revelation Photo-Visual Eyepiece kit) from 9mm to 32mm just to see what difference there was between them, and each time was able to focus sharply and see quite a bit of detail on the moon’s surface. The light pollution filter helped with this as the moon was quite bright (focusing on the moon’s surface where it met its shadowed edge was best; the craters here were really easy to see and looked really impressive).

Conclusion

I love this scope! I know that there are multitudes of different scopes out there, most of which are more capable (and more expensive) than this little mak, but as a beginner who wants an easy to set up, easy to align, easy to use scope, this fits the bill perfectly. It has definitely increased my desire to want to explore the night skies and see as many objects as I can, which can only be a good thing : ) I’m sure that I’ll get a lot of use out of this scope before I feel that I need to ‘go bigger’, and even then I think I’d keep the mak because apart from it’s ease of use, it’s really portable so will be good for taking to other sites (I’m planning on going out to darker sites with less light pollution and unobstructed views to the horizon so that I can see what the scope can do when viewing the planets, so I’ll update this post once I’ve managed it).

Last thoughts

Something I was surprised by was how much dew formed during my time using the scope. This mainly caused viewing problems because dew formed on the mak’s corrector plate on the front of the scope, and I also had some misting of the eyepieces. I’m sure this is normal, but as a beginner it kind of caught me out a little, even though I’d read enough to know that a dew shield is a must when using a mak scope. I had actually ordered a dew shield when I ordered the scope, but it was out of stock so I’m just waiting on my back-order now. I since also decided to ordered a Baader micro-fibre cleaning cloth so that I have something ‘approved’ to remove dew and/or finger marks etc from the corrector plate and EPs if required, and also a Sky-Watcher Dual LED torch, as I discovered it’s a must to have some form of light to see your accessories with : )

I hope this mini-review has been of interest/use to any beginners out there, or anyone interested in buying the 4SE scope – thanks for reading!

[andrew63]

Nice review - you'll be surprised just how much you can see with that telescope on clear nights - jupiter will be cracking! Think you have made a good choice.

andrew

[Charon]

I enjoyed reading your review Baz.