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Celestron StarSense Accessory

Chris Rowland

By Chris Rowland
in Member Equipment Reviews

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tekkydave

tekkydave

Posted
Posted

oh noooooooooooo, ekkkk, not another Dave! is that one on release to the general public?

Mine should be the same HC and SS version as yours. The motor control is different I think as mine is an SLT mount.

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TwinkleTwinkle

TwinkleTwinkle

Posted
Posted

i think im setting up my starsense wrong, or maybe it needs calibrrating, i tried to set it up a couplei of nights ago, it struggled after the 3rd time it said aliigned, although  the planets it offered me were pluto, neptune , uranus, and venus, 

i clicked venus and the telescope went to my shed..

now im thinking  , i live in a dark village apart from the street lamp about 20 or so  foot away , is this sabotaging my starsense?

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RadMarv

RadMarv

Posted
Posted

Quick question...

Page 23 of the manual has the following written...

 Restore Defaults: This factory reset restores all

custom values like backlash, PEC, hand control
settings, and saved alignments
Will doing this allow me to re-do "First Time Setup: Calibrate Center"?
I know I did not do the "Fine Centering" correctly, as I used my 40MM lens doing both centerings and want to do it over.
Thanks.
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pyrasanth

pyrasanth

Posted
Posted

i think im setting up my starsense wrong, or maybe it needs calibrrating, i tried to set it up a couplei of nights ago, it struggled after the 3rd time it said aliigned, although  the planets it offered me were pluto, neptune , uranus, and venus, 

i clicked venus and the telescope went to my shed..

now im thinking  , i live in a dark village apart from the street lamp about 20 or so  foot away , is this sabotaging my starsense?

I have 3 sodium street lights within 30 feet of my telescope & the star sense works okay under these conditions so I don't think light is the issue. One of the most important upgrades you can give yourself is a GPS upgrade module as this, particularly for planetary work, makes a massive difference as accurate time is everything. You will also need to center the camera view with your eyepiece view to get consistent pointing accuracy. I'm very happy with my star sense but it will become less important as shortly I will take delivery of a Paramount MX+ which has superb pointing by using plate solving. 

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alanjgreen

alanjgreen

Posted
Posted

Quick question...

Page 23 of the manual has the following written...

 Restore Defaults: This factory reset restores all

custom values like backlash, PEC, hand control

settings, and saved alignments

Will doing this allow me to re-do "First Time Setup: Calibrate Center"?

I know I did not do the "Fine Centering" correctly, as I used my 40MM lens doing both centerings and want to do it over.

Thanks.

If you go to the CAMERA Menu, choose CALIBRATE and you can start over with a new calibration. Use low power for rough centering then switch to high power for fine centre. Finish centering by moving UP and RIGHT.

If you miss the centre then move around in a rectangle to finish up right once again.

Make sure that you are fully aligned and tracking before starting.

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pyrasanth

pyrasanth

Posted
Posted

Iv just read the calibrate but in the Manual , I don't understand it.

Post the instructions which your reading and we will try & help you translate these into something you can understand. Some instructions manuals are written to drive one to despair!

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tekkydave

tekkydave

Posted
Posted

Iv just read the calibrate but in the Manual , I don't understand it.

If you mean what is written on P12 I agree - it takes a few readings to follow what's going on.

Basically you ask it to scroll to a named star. Then you centre the star in your eyepiece and tell it to calibrate. It then remembers the offset between the fov of the scope and fov of the camera. In future it uses the offset in order to place the object at the centre of the scopes fov. You do another auto-align straight away and it should put the objects dead centre of the eyepiece.

I think it only goes into the calibrate procedure the first time you do an align.

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tekkydave

tekkydave

Posted
Posted

Mine works brilliantly but others have had problems with certain mounts. I use a nexstar mount with the 127 slt so I can't speak for your mount. Maybe someone who has a cg5-gt will add their comments.

Celestron have fixed a lot of the early issues with recent firmware upgrades. If you get one ask for it to have the latest firmware or upgrade it yourself before trying it out.

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Dewi Daniels

Dewi Daniels

Posted
Posted

Hi I want to buy one of these for my cg5-gt but are they working well now or do they still have faults?.

Many Thanks

Darren

StarSense is working very well now, unless you need ASPA (which still hasn't been fixed). The latest beta got the planetary positions spot on. 

I believe the CG-5 needs a modified splitter, which Celestron will send you.

I'm very pleased with the performance of StarSense on my NexStar 4SE. It aligns very quickly and accurately, even at twilight.

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Dewi Daniels

Dewi Daniels

Posted
Posted

Iv just read the calibrate but in the Manual , I don't understand it.

The instructions in the manual on how to do "Calibrate Center" are just plain wrong (or at best, out of date). It caused me a lot of frustration when I first got my StarSense.

proflight2000 posted some instructions that worked for me:

Hi Peter, I have had the same trouble as you it seems, if it makes it any easier I will do a 1,2,3 on what I ended up doing after everyones contributions as such. I must add, I have left my finderscope on the scope as I had real problems trying to find the star when I was sent to it. anyways, for my pennysworth. and this is for my alt,az cpc 800.

1. Update the handset and camera firmware to the latest version

2. Place the scope facing where you wish with the scope itself horizontal to the ground, I had my scope facing south, south west.

3. Turn on the scope and let the handset goe through its setup. When it is ready press align, then choose auto align and press enter. The scope now moves looking for stars.

4. If all is ok and the starsense is happy it tells you it is ready.

5. At this point, if you have not yet aligned your camera with your scope do the following, Press Star, Press named star, then search for a good bright star you can use. I chose Procyon.

6. Once happy press enter and the scope should turn to the vicinity of the star you chose, I did find i was quite out and really needed my finderscope.

7. Once near or at the star, press align, the handset will advise on some information.. when you are ready press enter, at this point you need to use the handset control buttons to move the star into the center of your eyepiece, once happy press enter.

8. After pressing enter you will need to use a higher powered eyepiece and again using the handset controls move the star into the center. When you are totally happy press align.

9. At this point do nothing as the handset will calculate a few things, hopefully you will then get a message advising all is ok and it will advise you to realign the scope.

10. This is the nitty gritty bit. Dont move, or turn off the scope, press the back button until you are back in the auto align screen and then press enter, the scope will now once again move around the sky, if all has been good, the handset will advise that it is ready. From that point on you are free to go and look at what you wish, it should now be working.

I know this is long winded, but I hope by writing it down as such it may help others in the same boat as I was, again this was for my CPC so best wishes with other set ups.

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TwinkleTwinkle

TwinkleTwinkle

Posted
Posted

Thank you fellow stargazers, next clear night im going to go through your help, im desperate to get it going as since removing my manual scopes spotter iv not seen anything. Scope nights say its going to be clear tonight but it tends to tease and getbmy hopes up!

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proflight2000

proflight2000

Posted
Posted

The starsense is a lovely little addition, the main crux was firstly make sure you have the latest firmware and secondly, when you do the initial calibration and all is well then you are told to find a star to go to, do that and center it, then when it tells you that you need to do autoalign set up, DONT TOUCH ANYTHING AT THE SCOPE, DONT MOVE IT AND DO NOT TURN IT OFF, leave it where it is and press AUTOALIGN setup button on the handset, the scope will start an auto align from the star you chose. The starsense is now using your chosen star to look at the sky again. From there it will then send you a message saying all is ok. The instruction book is hopeless, Where it is failing people is that when it tells you to pick a star to callibrate on, you do that and all is ok, then when it resquests that it has to carry out another autoalign, people are turning off the scope and placing it back to its original position, that is why its finding your shed.

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Dewi Daniels

Dewi Daniels

Posted
Posted

The starsense is a lovely little addition, the main crux was firstly make sure you have the latest firmware and secondly, when you do the initial calibration and all is well then you are told to find a star to go to, do that and center it, then when it tells you that you need to do autoalign set up, DONT TOUCH ANYTHING AT THE SCOPE, DONT MOVE IT AND DO NOT TURN IT OFF, leave it where it is and press AUTOALIGN setup button on the handset, the scope will start an auto align from the star you chose. The starsense is now using your chosen star to look at the sky again. From there it will then send you a message saying all is ok. The instruction book is hopeless, Where it is failing people is that when it tells you to pick a star to callibrate on, you do that and all is ok, then when it resquests that it has to carry out another autoalign, people are turning off the scope and placing it back to its original position, that is why its finding your shed.

I agree it's worth persevering with the StarSense. I can't imagine going back to doing manual alignments. I know it's not that difficult to do a manual alignment, but you have to do it every time you switch on the scope. I love watching the StarSense do its stuff. It even works in twilight, when I'd struggle to do a manual alignment. After the latest beta, planets as well as deep space objects are spot on.

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pyrasanth

pyrasanth

Posted
Posted

Hi as a new member I have been following this thread with great interest, recently purchased a celestron next star 8 se and have found the alignemt procedure a bit tedious , also the finder scope supplied with the scope not very handy when wearing glasses and kneeling down trying to centre an object. the celestron right angle finder did seem a good upgrade but for a not to greater amount of cash the starsense seemed even better, from what you all have been saying I have taken the plunge and purchased one from Green Witch at Burstall.

From your latest posts a remark was made about using the celestron skysync gps with the starsense to negate having to put in time and date every time the scope is turned on, also accuracy is improved, does anybody have any experience of the Nx02 star gps sold by I O Astronomy they have a model compatible with celestron scopes at a lower price !.

This is my first post, hope it works.    J R

I use the NX02 it works superbly. On some telescopes you need to turn off the internal RTC so the firmware uses your new GPS & not the settings for date/time/latitude/longitude stored in the telescopes CMOS. Just follow the instructions for your telescope on the web site. Buy direct as well as you will save a few pounds even with duty.

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