Celestron StarSense Explorer Dobsonian Owners

[AKB]

4 hours ago, Martin Meredith said:

I recently took delivery of a Celestron 10" Dob

Time to update your forum signature!  🙂

[paulastro]

12 hours ago, Martin Meredith said:

Thanks Paul for these tips and observations.

I was pretty happy with getting the object into the FOV, and indeed I aligned by zooming right in each time. The mirror itself is clean, pristine almost. It might be that my phone camera lens wasn't...

One thing I noticed during the initial setup was that when centering the camera over the mirror I always had a dark edge at top and bottom, while in their demo video I see a nice clear centred image.

I also selected to have the advanced camera controls (exposure/gain/iso) on the menu but I'm not sure whether they're needed. It seems they're they're just available for the setup stage when centering the mirror since that's done in daylight I guess.

I'm sure it will be a game changer for me too. I was really happy with the actual results, just surprised by how often it reported not being able to find itself.

Thanks Martin.  It sounds as if you are already doing pretty well with it, the longer you use it the better it becomes as you learn all the the things it's capable of doing.

Don't worry about the dark edges, you mention when setting up, it happens to mine too. I think it's because it is on a wide angle setting at this time and operates in portrait mode.  At night it's not really noticeable.  Just ensure you can see as much sky as possible.

I would avoid using the advanced controls, they aren't necessary if the setup is right.  If it's also telling you that it needs to take longer exposures to find it's position this indicates all is not well.  I came across these only when I first had it and it turned out the phone I was trying to use was not compatable.  

Its much easier to do the setup in daylight, though you can do it at night.  If it's done properly in the day, it will work at night time.  Then when you take it outside at night just turn the app on, press the flashing symbol on the bottom line,  and check the box indicating it is 'still aligned' when it asks you to choose from some options.  You're then good to go.  The whole procedure only takes a couple of minutes.  Unless you've knocked the phone holder this should be all you need to do every time you set it up.  You don't have to go through the entire initial setup procedure again every time you use it, but I guess you know this already.

Having reflections from the back of the case seems unlikely to me I must say.  I always use my phone without the case on when using SS.  This is because a couple of times I found one edge of the phone wasn't pushed all the way into the holder, causing there to be a constant error in  the pointing till i noticed what it was!  If you have a thin case this probably won't be an issue.

It's  easily dark enough to use SS about an hour after sunsiet and you should get 100% success.  Rarely something will happen so it won't work, but this is usually something very simple such as you've knocked the phone holder or aligned it at night and tried to aligne the phone with a different star to that which is in the scopes field of view!  Sounds silly?  I've done it a couple of times myself!  (If you do this you'll have a constant error when you try to point to something)

Here's a link to something I posted some time ago that might possibly have something of use to you I haven't mentioned

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/402088-celestron-starsense-explorer-8-inch-dobsonian-review/#comment-4309136

 

[Martin Meredith]

Well, what can I say. Just in from an hour's session before the clouds rolled in and everything worked perfectly! I set up in a location less afflicted by security lights so maybe that was it.

Besides a spectacular first view of M42 in this scope, tonight's new highlights were the gorgeous NGC 2158 (the tight open cluster right next to M35) and the globular M79 (declination -24deg30' in Lepus). I'm at 55deg50' so was surprised to be able to get a decent view (or any view at all) of M79, not far above the southern horizon. Planetary nebula NGC 7662 (Blue Snowball) in Andromeda also showed some detail with a darker central zone, and I caught M33 and sigma orionis for the first time with this scope. I had time to revisit a bunch of objects en passant (something this tech makes all too tempting), including M82 which looked superb, M81, M95, M103, the Owl Cluster, M31, the double cluster, M52, M1, Jupiter and Uranus. Its true I'm still in 'filling my boots' mode with the new toy so didn't spent more than a few minutes on each.

This scope and tech is a real game-changer for me. To be able to set up and be observing in 2 minutes flat with no tedious alignment is a marvel (the Synscan handset approach I've been using for EAA this last decade is so much dinosaur-tech in comparison).

A few quick impressions of the scope and base (much has already been said above): the construction is really solid with no flex to speak of, and very fast settling time. The plastic handle to guide the top end is a real boon on cold nights, as are the carrying handles on the tube and base. Optically I'm enjoying really tight stars and very clear separations of the half dozen doubles I've looked at, and good colour as expected from a Newt. I'm not finding any objectionable coma. On a previous f4.5 scope I felt I needed to use a coma corrector but not here as yet though I'll try it out with the corrector at some point. The focuser is single speed but holds its position well so again no great rush to replace with a 2-speed.

Cheers

Martin