Sorry, the clouds are my fault.

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I have replaced my 200P/HEQ5 combo with this:

The star sense accessory is massive compared to the 5SE. I am sure it would look out of place on a 4SE.....

First impressions are that it looks and feels well made. I can move it around without my back giving out, which is a major bonus.

I also bought the Celestron Eyepiece and accessory kit on the basis that I included the eyepieces with the 200P when I traded it in this afternoon.

When I get the chance of a clear night,  I will provide a first light report. I am keen to see how well the Star sense works....

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Oooerrr missus, the clouds are still there but thinning out rather unexpectedly, I may take the scope outside and see if the tales of it aligning in twilight are exaggerated.....

[russ.will]

To be fair, a 5"er can't hold much cloud!

Enjoy.

Russell

[John]

Neat little scopes the Celeston C5's 

Having had some back problems in the past I appreciate the importance of a scope thats easy to move about. I hope you have a lot of fun with it 

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Thanks John, I hope I get some enjoyment, but the cloud gods heard me and have sent some more to make my enjoyment on getting out for first light so much greater....

I can lift the whole scope and mount without a problem, I may need to lower the legs and sit down to observe, standing is a little painful when the target is near the horizon, as I noticed testing the scope out using a house a few streets away - Chimney, not windows ;-)

Oh well, there's always tomorrow night....

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First light......

Its cloudy outside, well some patches that wander past - nothing new there.

Starsense - It struggled to find something to lock onto on auto (Trees and buildings in the way, plus clouds). So I did a manual star sense alignment, this time it seemed to find enough stars to work with. Slewed to the Moon using the go to and it was way off. I discovered the reason - I had the time entered a little out. SO I re-entered the time again and did a manual alignment. Success - it found the Moon this time - I spotted that Vega was in a clear patch of sky so slewed round to that and did a calibration on that It was in the EP, in fact it was nearly central.  I like the way the star sense chooses a star that you are looking in the general direction of.

Unfortunately it needed to re-align now that I had adjusted its centre. I have work in the morning and only came in 5 minutes ago!!! I wanted to put up my first light report before bed. so the re-align didn't happen. I can always repeat it when I get another outing.

I struggled to focus the scope initially, it was waaaaaaaay out and took a great number of turns of the focuser knob. Once focused the image was really nice and sharp and quite bright.  

The moon was obviously bright in the 32mm EP, I didn't use the moon filter for this first light, but the image was superb, the seeing wasn't too bad. I should have tried more magnification, but I was just doing a quick first look.

I even managed to align the 9x50 finder scope on my 3d printed adaptor.(sorry for plug. Not sure if I am allowed to offer to print it for anyone)

Considering I forgot to fit the centre plate, the scope/mount was quite stable.

It took me around 15 minutes to get aligned, but this was the first time I had used it and it was cloudy.

So was it a good buy?

Unequivocally YES. 

It fits my requirements for a light scope that I can carry out in one go, without hurting my back. 

Once I had gotten used to the Starsense manual alignment process it was easy to set up.

Would I recommend the scope setup as I bought it, Yup.

I cant wait to get out and do some proper observing soon :-)

One happy bunny here.