Sneaky Celestron Nexguide update

[parallaxerr]

I'm not sure how common knowledge this is as it happened a while ago, but judging by the research I had to do to find out, I guess it's not!

I'm 99% there with my new imaging rig and have just bought the final pieces - a guidescope and autoguider. As I am using a DSLR, I decided I wanted a stand alone guider thus avoiding the hassle of a laptop in the field. The usual candidates came up when searching - Skywatcher synguider, Baader LVI and Celestron Nexguide. Being a Celestron fanboy and not having the funds to splash on the highly rated Baader, I settled on the Nexguide.

However, a little research threw up a lot of bad reports on sensor sensitivity, failed guiding attempts & hot pixel tracking which was enough to put me off until I dug a little deeper. No doubt a lot of the bad experiences are due to user error but I noticed a lot of the posts were dated back around, or shortly after the initial product release date. What late came to light was that in 2012/13...

CLESTRON updated the Nexguide...and didn't tell anyone!!!

The chip was changed from a Sony CCD to an Aptiva CMOS with smaller pixels and more importantly, sub-pixel guiding software was added instead of peak-sensitivity. I initially came acorss the information on a CN thread where one particular user owns both pre and post-mod versions, claiming the newer one to be much better.

Subsequently I contacted Harrison telescopes and Ed was kind enough to open up a box to check the manual for sensor specs. Sure enough, the manual says V2.0 on the front and the sensor spec was Aptiva, however, the outer retail box still has the SONY specs and the part number hasn't changed?

So there you go, now you know. Just thought I'd share this incase anyone's been put off by early reports. Also, for me, the new chip was the difference in bringing the pixel scale closer to that of the imaging scope for better guiding...in theory.

CN thread: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/448573-standalone-autoguider-question/

[gtis]

Probably using all the old boxes up first

neil

[parallaxerr]

Must have had a lot of boxes, 4yrs later......

[SkyJamie]

I think they did the same thing to the SynGuider 2 as well.

Thanks for the info