Celestron Nexstar 4SE

[dodgiedave]

I have recently received my 4SE after much thought into what second scope to buy. I already own a Skywatcher Skyliner 250PX Dobsonian but wanted something with a Go-To function that my little boy could use (8 years old). Because I already have the large aperture Skywatcher I did not want to be too let down by a smaller scope. I am a member of an astronomy society so get to use some very high end scopes. I live in a rural location with fairly decent dark sky and very little light pollution. I have never used one of these scopes before so when it arrived I did not know what to expect. I am 34 years old and can work out electronics fairly easily but am no Whizz!

The delivery man arrived and as usual the box was huge considering the small size of the scope.

As you can see it was the usual warehouse type box. However when this was opened I was quite impressed with a further shop stock style box. Loads of packging! The scope was obviously very safe.

Once opened everything was seperatly boxed. It is clear that a lot of thought has gone into this. It feels as though the box could be thrown about and nothing would move about or be damaged.

The initial feel of everything is quality. The scope and mount feel heavy and robust, as does the tripod. All the cables, software and eyepiece came neatly packaged in a further box. Everything was easy to open and the boxes remained undamged making it possible to box back up if moving house etc.

I had purchased a Maplin 5 in 1 jumpstarter to use with this. This is perfect for the job and I strongly reccomend them.

I screwed the scope and mount to the tripod, this was very easy to do and although clear instructions are provided I would not really need them.

At this stage I purely had a play with the scope moving it around. The motors are fairly quite, there appears to be no play or movement in any direction and again the tripod and scope feel very solid. At this stage the only thing I found a little poor was the handset housing. When you remove the piece of tape securing the handset it feels a little insecure and is not held very firm, although it does not really need to be I just thought it would be. When you remove the handset the hole that is left looks a little unfinished and rough around the edges, it takes away a little of the quality feel but is a minor point overall.

Along with the paperwork I found an update sheet due to recent changes. I initially thought 'Oh here we go' but was then pleasantly surprised to find out that the Nexstar hand controller has been upgraded to the Nexstar+. I did not know this when looking second hand but am glad I got the new one. There are several changes, the buttons are completely different and appear very obvious and easy to use. The + version has also been upgraded to work in very cold conditions which was a problem of the older handsets.

Collomination appeared spot on, the scope was already attached to the mount and all covers and screws fit excellent with a quality feel and no play anywhere.

After a couple of anxious days the clouds gave way to some clear sky!

I levelled the tripod in a few seconds by adjusting the legs. I used an App on my phone with a bubble level, although the scope does come with a little manual one! Adjusting the legs feels solid and was very easy to do, it did not take much fine adjusting and was very stable on ordinary grass.

I sat the scope and mount on top and could see that there are 3 large spring loaded screws that screw in from underneath. The mount has a small hole in the center, when sitting onto the tripod there is a small springloaded pin that helps to get it center. The 3 screws all tightened fine and were very easy to use as they are large and would be easy to use with gloves or cold hands.

I fired up the handset that was very east to read, I followed the screen commands and again using the phone App I entered my longitude and lattitude, I entered the time, timezone and date. I then centered the scope on a bright star, I then fine tuned the starfinder which was done with ease. The starfinder is perfect for the job although it feels a little plasticy compared to the rest of the kit. I then centered the scope on 2 more bright stars clicking on the apropriate align button when prompted. So after about 4-6 minutes the scope now says aligned. I pushed 'back' as it then shows you the names of the stars that you had used! Very impressive!

Now for the real test. I worked through the handset and found it extrememly easy to use, there was little delay and each part of the menu was easy to follow and obvious in its route. I played around with motor speeds and different catalogues.

Here it go's! I enetred Andromeda galaxy and clicked 'enter' The scope automatcally slewed around and settled......I took a look in the 25mm provided eyepiece and there it was! Just a little to the top left off center. I centred it and set the tracking. It followed it fine! There is an option to fine tune the Go-To. I have not yet found the need for this as everything I have entered has been fine and needed very little adjustment to get it centered.

My 8 year old boy had a play around and found it very easy to follow the menu and navigate to loads of different items. He was impressed!

Items such as Andromeda appeared as a white smudge, as I would expect, the ring nebula could be made out and by using averted vision the ring could be seen. Stars are absolutely awesome with this scope and it split double stars perfectly giving me some lovely views of double stars with real colour differences, this area of observing is more crisp than my large dob. The planets and moon are fantastic with this scope and are so crisp that they appear surreal like a computer generated image, loads of colour! I have used the features such as 'Sky Tour' when I could not think of what to go to next. Great! The scope also tells you about what you are looking at with the press of the 'info button' Having never had a Go-To before I could not ask for more and the system exceeds what I thought I was goin to get for under £400!

I used an astrozap dew shield with the scope and the Maplin power tank. All worked fine.

The 25mm eyepiece that comes with the scope is great. I have other far more expensive eyepieces but so far I have just used this as it is well up to the job. It is metal construction and better quality than eyepieces supplied with other brands.

I would rate this scope as 9/10 overall and would reccomend to others. I have made the right choice with this scope.

I am impressed with the quality of Celestron and would probably lean towards them in the future. The scope gives great views of everything you would expect. If anything it exceeded my expectations of what I was going to be able to see!

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice "unpacking" report. I am a long time user of the venerable GP-C8 model from Celestron, and was very impressed with the 26mm Plossl (Vixen-made) which came with the scope (and really, with everything in the whole package). It is good to hear they still supply good EPs. I think it is better to supply a single good one, than two so-so.

[mikehab]

Nice report Dave - thanks for sharing.

As an 'avid' 4SE user myself (it's the only scope I've got) I can relate to a lot of what you experienced - including the slight disappointment at the housing for the hand-controller - that's the only bit that detracts from what would otherwise be a 100% quality build. It's a lovely little scope which is v.easy & quick to setup, very easy to align and use, and also a very capable performer in the image quality department. It's also small enough to pack into a bag and take on holiday - I took mine to the Dordogne this year and it was great

I've progressed to using mine for some astro-photography with mixed results ... for lunar (with DSLR at prime) it's great. For planetary viewing it's great - giving nice crisp views, and with a webcam it's reasonable/medium for photographing saturn/jupiter. It's not-so great for deep-sky astro-photography due to the slow f/13 focal ratio and the tracking mount is only accurate for relatively short exposures (~20s). I've tried to do a proper polar Eq wedge align but with little success, and last night for example I wanted to take a photo of the M27 dumbell nebula, but after slewing to it (and finding it straight away in the eyepiece) I then discovered that I couldn't attach the DSLR to the back of the scope as there wasn't enough room between the back of the OTA and the base of the mount. Despite that ... it's still a great little scope! Overall I've been extremely happy with my 4SE - t's a great little entry-level GoTo/tracking scope.

Mike

[onesmallstep]

Hi

Thanks for the write-up. I'm thinking of getting a 4SE as a grab and go scope to supplement my Skyliner 200P and this thread has definitely influenced my decision to cross to the dark side and get a goto.

[cantharis]

I recently sold my 4SE and invested the money wisely. I enjoyed the 4SE and it helped show me how I want my gear to progress to suit my needs. I liked the GOTO function and have converted my GEM to GOTO. And have invested in a small cheapo 80mm f5 refractor on a AltAz mount that simply tracks as my grab ´n go. I hope the new owner of my 4SE enjoys it !!