Celestron StarSense Accessory and 8iSE

[merloo1]

I own a Celestron 8i SE telescope. I just purchased Celestron's new StarSense accessory believing that my SE (nothing was said about 8iSE) telescope was compatible. The instructions for the StarSense seem to say that my telescope is not compatible. I called Celestron support and they didn't want to discuss it. Their take is that no "i" telescope is compatible. Before returning the StarSense I decided to connect the controller and camera up to my "I" telescope while it was in my house. It appears to be working! It took my site information and slewed back and fourth trying to find stars. When it couldn't find any it displayed "too few stars" and tried again. This is what I expected as there are no stars in my house. I'm going to wait until I get a clear night for further testing but my question is this. If the telescope slews and it appears the the controller is communicating with the camera through the aux port. Is there any other way it could fail? Why would Celestron just dismiss this telescope out of hand?

I know there are issues with the very first versions of the "i" series of telescopes as a couple of years ago I was told that a software upgrade would most likely fail for my telescope. Like now I tried anyway and my controller software is upgraded to 4.21. Does anyone else have experience with issues like this?

Doug

[NGC 1502]

Hi Doug, welcome to SGL.

Whilst I cannot help with the issue you have, didn't want to let your very first post go unanswered.

How about getting back to Celestron, you may get a more helpful response from someone else there, or maybe contact the dealer you purchased from ?

Hope you sort it, Ed.

[tekkydave]

You can also try the teamcelestron website. You might get a response directly from a Celestron tekkie.

[PeterCPC]

+1 for Team Celestron.

Peter