StarSense

[Goldfinger]

Has anyone used StarSense on their telescope? I'm in a  heavily light polluted city and wonder how something like that might work. It can be very difficult trying to locate guide stars as it stands now.

I don't want to spend any money on something like that unless I know for sure what to expect.

[Shimrod]

39 minutes ago, Goldfinger said:

Has anyone used StarSense on their telescope? I'm in a  heavily light polluted city and wonder how something like that might work. It can be very difficult trying to locate guide stars as it stands now.

I don't want to spend any money on something like that unless I know for sure what to expect.

You can find a number of threads on here if you search for starsense - mostly happy users although there are a few cases where people have had difficulty getting the device to work accurately.

I have one which I use with my AVX. It's great if you are doing visual work for getting the telescope aligned/up and running quickly and are not using a laptop. If you are imaging, there are more cost effective alternatives using free platesolving software. Starsense devices are often available in the 'for sale' section of this forum.

[Cosmic Geoff]

I assume you mean the hardware device and not the more recent app.

I use it in conjuction with a C8 SE as a quick-deploy setup. The skies here are not great - nominally Bortle 6, but the Starsense usually works well.  The skies are never so light polluted here that I can't see the bright alignment stars.  The Starsense even works with some scattered cloud in the sky, but I have found that there are two things it does not like which can cause alignment to fail: an overly bright sky at dusk, and a full moon.

What brand of telescope do you own? The Starsense only works with Celestron mounts and (with an extra adapter box) Sky-watcher mounts.

[Goldfinger]

17 hours ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

I assume you mean the hardware device and not the more recent app.

I use it in conjuction with a C8 SE as a quick-deploy setup. The skies here are not great - nominally Bortle 6, but the Starsense usually works well.  The skies are never so light polluted here that I can't see the bright alignment stars.  The Starsense even works with some scattered cloud in the sky, but I have found that there are two things it does not like which can cause alignment to fail: an overly bright sky at dusk, and a full moon.

What brand of telescope do you own? The Starsense only works with Celestron mounts and (with an extra adapter box) Sky-watcher mounts.

I just purchased a Celestron Nexstar 6SE. I'm not even aware of an app but would like to know more about it. I would imagine that works in conjunction with the StarSense hardware.

We have severely light polluted skies here in my city and I use my scope on a lighted rooftop deck as well. So I have a double whammy with regards to light pollution. The only things I can see at night is the moon and jets. That's it. Most of the time I just set my scope up and just scan the skies I hoped of finding something to view.. I've tried to locate the planets manually but haven't been successful at it, even with the star charts like Stellarium or Sky Portal.

That's why I'd like to get some information on how successful StarSense is in locating the planets.

[Alan64]

https://www.celestron.com/products/starsense-autoalign

It's sold with 6SE kits as well, so you know it's compatible.  With the StarSense AutoAlign, you don't need to pick stars out of a daytime-like sky.  Afterwards, the mount will be aligned with everything in the sky, including the planets.  

[Cosmic Geoff]

At a typical site, Starsense will locate the planets for you. However you don't need any fancy kit to locate the brighter planets - Jupiter, Venus and Mars as they outshine the brightest stars.  Today however, Jupiter and Saturn are visible only in the early morning and Venus in the evening twilight just after sunset.  The Starsense smartphone app is nothing to do with the Starsense hardware - it just uses the same software scheme to plate-solve the sky, and the licesnse is sold along with an entry level scope kit and a smartphone holder.

I would advise you not to buy the Starsense hardware as it will probably not work at your location (too much stray light).  Instead I suggest you persist with the basic GoTo alignment scheme.   Even if you can only see the Moon or one bright star, you can do a Solar System align on the Moon or a one-star alignment on the bright star (assuming you know what it is. 🙂)  To make this work effectively you will have to accurately level your tripod, placing a spirit level across the top flat surface, or using the bubble level that came with the scope kit (after checking its accuracy with a bubble level).

If you can identify two bright stars by name, you can use the more accurate two star auto align.

The field of view of a C6 is quite small, so you are unlikely to find much of interest by pointing it randomly at the sky.