Celeston Starsense

[ST200adz]

Hi all

I have a probably silly question 

I'm looking to get a Starsense, now both Rothvalley and Tring Astronamy centre are doing the Starsense for Skywatcher mounts for £300, the usual Celestron one is £340 ish

Does the Sktwatcher version work with Celestron mounts too?  As far as I can work out the only difference is the Skywatcher one comes with an aux port splitter, I'll need one to connect to my CG5-GT any way

I'd rather save 40 quid lol

 

Thanks

 

Adz

[PeterCPC]

Why not ask the supplier?

Peter

[Cosmic Geoff]

The Sky-watcher version used to have an extra box and cost about £100 extra, which implies that the Sky-watcher and Celestron versions are incompatible. But ask the supplier.

[b16707]

is a starsense even worth it? Seems easy enough to align a scope using 3 star.

[Geoff Lister]

I've got Starsense built in to my Skyprodigy mount. It works well when it is dark (even with moonlight) but it needs to see tens of stars in several small patches of sky. Around the summer solstice, most of the UK does not have astronomical darkness, and, certainly in the Bristol area, you are lucky to see more than a few of the brightest "Alpha" stars much before 23:00.

However, by using my Skymax mount (mechanically equivalent to the Skyprodigy, but without the camera), with the Synscan "Brightest Star" alignment, I can start with a manual slew to Jupiter and then automatic slews to Arcturus followed by Altair. This gets the mount aligned, and you can spend plenty of time enjoying Jupiter whilst waiting for the faint fuzzies to become visible.

Geoff

[newbie alert]

Why not save most of that money and buy APT or SGP and use its plate solving software if you don't want to just do a star alignment..

[Cosmic Geoff]

4 hours ago, newbie alert said:

Why not save most of that money and buy APT or SGP and use its plate solving software if you don't want to just do a star alignment..

How long does it take to understand what these are and get it working?  I'd rather go for a packaged solution. Life too short etc.

[RobertI]

If you do go for starsense, the CG5 requires an additional cable which costs about £70 (!) so you might not consider this economic. 

Edit - ooops, just spotted you already know this! Ignore comment.

[ST200adz]

Thanks for the comments after some more research the Skywatcher version is not compatible so Ive ordered a Celestron one

I have a Skyprodigy mount too, so much faster to align for me and I havnt used the CG5 yet as I find it frustrating trying to find Stars in the eyepeice, I generally use a Camera lens (Tamron 150-600mm) so can be a pain in the bottom

[newbie alert]

9 hours ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

How long does it take to understand what these are and get it working?  I'd rather go for a packaged solution. Life too short etc.

I wouldn't know as yet as I'm about to start going down this route...but aligning the mount on 3 stars don't take long..

I wasted 3 weeks off my life trying to use starsense..best thing I did was getting rid if it..

[Luna-tic]

On ‎21‎/‎07‎/‎2018 at 04:08, newbie alert said:

I wouldn't know as yet as I'm about to start going down this route...but aligning the mount on 3 stars don't take long..

I wasted 3 weeks off my life trying to use starsense..best thing I did was getting rid if it..

I'm beginning to think the same thing. It works well when it works, but I've found it to be occasionally inconsistent. Some nights I get perfect star alignment, some nights I think it's on a different planet than I am. Most times are okay. I had purchased the Celestron Starsense before getting an EQ6R, and had wondered about inter-compatibility between the brands. It was quickly apparent that the connector for the hand controls was not compatible between brands, and I was somewhat disappointed I couldn't use the Celestron Starsense on the Skywatcher mount. However, when I saw how accurate the go-to was on a 3 star alignment with the EQ6R, I quit thinking about it. As for the AVX mount,  doing a 3-star alignment and a couple of calibration stars doesn't take that much longer than using Starsense, and I get as good accuracy, so I've sort of parked the Starsense in its box for now. I'll keep it for a while, but may sell it at some point. 

[bryand]

I've just gone back to using my StarSense after the midsummer break (when it couldn't find enough stars).

I often use a manual align, where you tell it where to look for stars - this avoids obstacles and speeds up the alignment process.  Used like this, I find it is quicker and more accurate than a finderscope alignment.