First Light - Nexstar 6se

[Gatchaman]

After a bit of deliberation, and a few chats with Steve at FLO, eventually plumped for the 6se as my first ever telescope. Only had a look through a pretty poor Tasco refractor before, so was a little unsure of what to really expect.

Ordered the 'scope on Wednesday and it duly arrived the next day (thanks Steve), unfortunately the Revelation Eyepiece set is on back-order so I will be limited to 60x with the 25mm E-lux Plossl until it comes. The 'scope came just as I had started to cut the grass, so put it aside as I finished off cutting the lawn (quickest it's ever been done).

Was pleasantly surprised with the heft of the box when I took it inside and promptly started to reveal it's many layers, very nicely packaged I must say.

Opened the tripod box first and was a little surprised at how thick the legs looked on it (something that is hard to get across from an image on the net) pulled it out and put it to one side, had a very nice feeling of solidity to it. Opened the accessory box next and all seemed to be in order, eyepiece seemed to have a nice weight to it (compare to the Tasco ones I had handled before) and a feeling of quality, diagonal was not quite as impressive, but this was just my initial reaction. Left the best (in my eyes) to last and finally opened the OTA box, again the OTA was bigger than I had expected - maybe because the Alt-Az base is already attached - which I promptly put in pride of place on my kitchen work top. I thought that the OTA would be a flat orange colour but was in fact a snazzy metallic orange, not to everyone's taste I know but I thought it looked OK.

The entire thing was an absolute doddle to put together once I had moved it outside again, only thing that held me up was finding the bubble level which I had left in a box inside. Must mention one thing here, the accessory tray/tripod leg brace did not come with the spring as shown in the manual, no biggy as it still tightened up and worked perfectly. The only tool I needed was a Phillips screwdriver to attach the Red Dot Finder.

As it was still daylight, attached the 'scope to my new power pack and switched on... the handset sprung to life, with the Align prompt scrolling by. Decided to line up the finder with the OTA on a distant chimney, which was easy enough to do, though the finder needed a lot of tweaking to get it in line. The optics, even at this time, looked to be great to my 'virgin' eyes. Switched everything off and decided to leave it outside until it was dark - praying that the light cloud cover would dissipate.

Came out just before dark as I knew Jupiter should be visible to the SW, and lo and behold it was. Still some patchy thin cloud about but luckily did not obscure my view. Flicked the power on and slewed round in the general direction - quite noisy but I don't think it will keep the neighbours awake aligned the planet with the RDF, then looked through the eyepiece... there was something there all right but just towards the bottom of the FOV and out of focus, quickly centred it and refocused (as many have said there is some image shift here, but the moment easily made me overlook this) and it just popped into sight. And what a sight, I could see a very bright small disk, with brown horizontal lines/patches to the north and south - moons were easily visible to either side as small star-like dots, the image was swimming quite a bit as you would imagine but I was truly in awe. Just stared like this for quite some time, manually correcting as it slid west, before I rushed into the house to tell the wife and kids, who duly came out and spent some time at the eyepiece - missus said it was alright while the kids thought it was cool - before I eased them off. Watched it like this until it disappeared behind some trees. Should hopefully stand a fair bit of magnification when I get my eyepiece set with it being so bright. As for the Celestron eyepiece itself, without any frame of reference I will leave that until I get the Revelation set to make any judgements.

Was now starting to get dark proper, but there was still some large patches of thin wispy cloud about, not enough to put me off but annoying all the same.

By this time there were enough stars out for me to try doing a proper SkyAlign. Entered date/time/co-ords etc. and was asked for the first of the three stars for alignment (must add here that the 'scope looks to be in near perfect collimation, with lovely concentric diffraction rings either side of focus), pointed to three bright stars - Polaris, Arcturus and Altair - pressed align and held my breath... Alignment Failed... damn. Tried the next option to align on two named stars, picked Polaris and Arcturus again and held my breath, this time it worked a charm picked Albireo and it was put close to the centre of the frame, very impressed, lovely separation as you would expect with a great contrast between the colours (left the 'scope tracking Albireo as I had to go in for a while as some friends came round to visit. When I came back over 30mins later, Albireo was still nicely in the FOV). Next was M13, which was quite disappointing as a very dim fuzzy ball, but seeing conditions were not at their best at this point as thin cloud had rolled in again With this being my first time stargazing proper, I was pretty much all over the place after that, with little rhyme or reason to what I was viewing, the patchy seeing added to the sense of urgency too... Couldn't get a view of the Moon as this was hidden behind a hideous carbuncle (house), but all in all not too bad a night despite being a little bit hectic.

Will get a more coherent viewing list put together after the initial excitement dies down and will try to get you a more considered and concise review of the 'scope too.

Sorry for taking up so much of your time but I got a little excited there.

All the best and dark skies,

Richard

[Grant]

Excellent review Richard! Really enjoyed reading it!

Thanks for sharing

[geppetto]

A usefull and honest report Richard...

Enjoyed reading it and good luck with your new gear in the future 8)

[stargazer1980]

Nice report richard!

You'll enjoy the Revalation EP set, as i have the same, and have had no quibbles with them!

Regards

Darren

[maroon bells]

nice review

[Andrew*]

wonderful review - all the steps nicely described. Hope you continue to enjoy that - looks a very user friendly machine!

Interesting that Telescope Service are selling this scope with a free Baader binoviewer at the moment. http://www.telescope-service.com/offers/start/offersstart.html

The only thing is they are also charging £300 more than FLO!! ... and then there's postage :shock:

you got it from the right place 8)

Andrew

[FLO]

Good review Richard

I will chase the Revelation eyepiece sets Tue.

[Gatchaman]

Thanks guys.

As I said above, I'll get a more considered second-light review put together when the eyepieces arrive.

Not had much luck getting any 'proper' viewing done the last few days with friends etc. coming round, and had to do some quick and 'dirty' set-ups to catch Jupiter and the Moon for them to gasp at

What I can say is that there are a lot more Pro's than Con's to owning this 'scope.

Andrew, I love some peoples impressions of free and while I like the idea of a binoviewer, my wallet doesn't.

By the way, is it normal to be thinking about what upgrades and new 'scopes you could buy so soon after getting your first one?

All the best,

Richard

[tom.yates]

Great report Richard

[Markinaboat]

Hi Richard,

Hope you're still here! You wrote such a good report, I for one would be very interested to hear your views 6yrs down the line. How you got on with the 6SE, if you upgraded it then why. What were the annoying (if any) aspects of owning the 6Se etc.

Cheers

Mark

[baggywrinkle]

Yes would be nice to hear...my 6SE has its 1st Birthday in December.

[Markinaboat]

Hi Baggy

How about you, 1 yr on?

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[baggywrinkle]

I had about 9 months use out of the 6SE and then had to pack it up to send it on a boat back to the UK whilst I headed off to Shanghai for a while.

I am pleased with what I did do though. I thought I had an issue with poor focus/collimation, but that was my problem of making a dewshield and not spraying the inside matt black.

I have a SWED80 on an EQ5 which is lovely in its own way.

For planetary work and lunar the 6SE has the focal length to delivery some good magnifications. It is not bad on DSO.

It attracts dew though if not protected and I can see me investing in some heaters when I am back in the UK. The ED80 seems to stay dew free under the same conditions for longer.

I much prefer the goto system set up used on the 6SE compared to the EQ5 SyncScan. The 6SE is so easy on a 2 or even 3 star. The SW Syncscan needs you to know the latin names of stars and does not give the constellations they are in.

The 6SE AZ mount is stable and when the set up has been done I see no problem in tracking for long periods, of course that is not to say it can be used for astro-p work, but shorter exposure of 20 secs are easy and the results can be good. Again the 6SE is slower than the ED80 and has a smaller field of view.

Dislikes? Not many except that the handset drops out of its holder all too easily, for the sake of a small adjustment to the mold tool they could have put in a clip ridge to hold it.

I solved that by using double sided velcro tape. One piece on the hand set and the other side on different bits of the mount.

Be careful with the power lead connection if you are running off a power tank. The head rotates taking the lead with it....it can pull out and then you have to set up again.

I run it off a power tank and that cures the problem of using loads of AA batteries which when they run down affect the GOTO capability.

My other drip is that Celestron use their own style of mounting the RDF to the OTA, not by a dove tail which is a shame as that would open up more opportunity for other accessories.

More plusses; It is easy and quick to set up. If you are already downstairs I would say keep it fully assembled. I did and there was no problem for me to carry it out to the garden in one piece.

When I did take it into the Perth Hills it was easy to break down into two. I would lay the OTA with the AZ arm on blankets and fold down the tripod.

All in all a great 'scope and very nice to use. Trouble is I have got greedy, I want more light grabbing power and more shiny shiny things........oooh my presciousssssss.

[Markinaboat]

Thanks for all of that useful info Baggy!

I'm wondering if by keeping it in the shed all year round would increase the dew issue?

My first choice is still the 100ED DS PRO but the tripod/mount is proving to be more difficult to choose. Am put off an EQ due to the setup time and maybe not being able to point and shoot (without alignment???). Seems the Porta Mount II may not be quite upto the job so considerign a Skytee2 or Giro3. In saying that, there's a company that sell the portamount II on a HAL130SXG tripod that looks to be more solid. Not sure if it's available in the UK though. 

Regards

Mark

[baggywrinkle]

Keeping in the shed would possibly improve the dew issue as the OTA would be adjusting all the time.

However dew is dew and if the conditions are right (wrong for the OTA) then dew will form.

It is all to do with  changes of air temperature and pressure and the fact that the OTA lags in time and temp with respect to the speed of change of ambient conditions. The OTA will be marginally warmer and that is enough for condensing conditions to occur.

[Markinaboat]

Of course. Thanks.

Ill get there soon!

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[RT65CB-SWL]

Hi Mark,

I own a C6/SCT, (I have owned it for just over one year), as well as a TeleVue Ranger and a 'modded' ETX105, and they take turns on being mounted on a Tele-Optic Giro II, (not all at the same time, only two at a time).

Just you wait until you increase the magnification. You will be amazed as to what 'she' can and will reveal! Earlier this year I saw a shadow of one of Jupiter's moons on the planets disk and I was only using my 20mm Meade Plossl e/p at the time, as well as showing me a peek at some of Saturn's moon family.

[Kimboman]

Great reviews I really like my se6 but I still enjoy my Meade Elx90 and my ancient Irving 70 mm refractor