Celestron’s starsense - could it be TOO good?

[RobertI]

I just bought myself a Celestron Starsense Explorer 70LT - basically a cheap achro refractor with an attachment for your mobile phone, allowing you to use Celestron’s Starsense technology via an app on your phone to find objects. I’ve just been out for a couple of hours, and I’ll cut to the chase - it’s just brilliant. It made finding objects so easy, that I almost felt I was cheating. Suffice it to say that with my cheap 70mm achro made mostly of plastic, within the space of a few minutes I had found and observed globulars M13 and M3, galaxies M81, M82, planetaries NGC6543 (the Cats Eye nebula) and NGC6826 (the Blinking Planetary), the Eastern Veil (kind of), and open cluster M39. Each time I searched, Starsense did its thing, guiding me to the object with helpful arrows, taking an image to platesolve when it senses the telescope has stopped moving, and guiding me the final few minutes of arc the object - every single time the object was clearly in the field of view of a 66 degree 20mm eyepiece at 35x magnification, giving a FOV of 1.9 degrees. I should add that there was a bright moon in the sky, but I kept well away and everything worked fine. If I wanted to move around the garden to get a better view, no problem, Starsense was unaffected - this was weird for someone who has been used to not touching a tripod once a mount is aligned. 

As for the scope itself, the mount is very wobbly and the eyepieces leave a lot to be desired, but when I added a decent-ish WO 20mm eyepiece (a lightweight eyepiece was needed and this fitted the bill) the views improved dramatically and the scope produced some really nice views. I think the correct image diagonal also helped to make the experience seem easy. There are a number of other scopes, including newts and SCTs, but they all seem to live on wobbly mounts and tripods which is a shame. The exceptions are the 8” and 10” dobs which look like perfect companions for starsense. 

Definitely a success and I will be looking at how to convert this for use on my other scopes. 👍

Edited May 27, 2023 by RobertI

[Alan White]

It is such a shame that Celestron has missed the opportunity to sell a self contained unit to move from scope to scope.

[drjolo]

A friend of mine (quite an advanced observer) was also impressed with this device. I think some adaptations may be done with 3D printer help. 

[tomato]

Thanks for the review, I was going to wait and see if Celestron would market this  as a stand alone device but it sounds so good think I will be tempted to go ahead and buy the entry level scope just so I can get my hands on one for my SW Dob.

[tomato]

Thanks for the review, I was going to wait and see if Celestron would market this  as a stand alone device but it sounds so good think I will be tempted to go ahead and buy the entry level scope just so I can get my hands on one for my SW Dob.

Just found a used 80mm version on eBay, so I’ve pushed the button.👍😊

[bosun21]

I bought the LT70 more or less after the first positive reviews came out about the starsense unit. I fitted it initially onto my 8” dobsonian at the time and then now moved it to my 12”. It’s worked flawlessly each and every time apart from once where it just wouldn’t recognize the sky. No matter where I pointed it, it would fail. On removing my phone I discovered a large greasy fingerprint on the camera lens. After cleaning it was back to operating flawlessly. Great piece of kit and a massive timesaver. I just fitted a small black Perspex plate and a Synta finder shoe. Easy for most.

[bosun21]

8 minutes ago, tomato said:

Thanks for the review, I was going to wait and see if Celestron would market this  as a stand alone device but it sounds so good think I will be tempted to go ahead and buy the entry level scope just so I can get my hands on one for my SW Dob.

Just found a used 80mm version on eBay, so I’ve pushed the button.👍😊

Make sure they have the activation code and they haven’t been used up.

[tomato]

Yes, good point I only need one I suppose but it would be a wasted purchase if they have all been used.

[RobertI]

2 minutes ago, tomato said:

Yes, good point I only need one I suppose but it would be a wasted purchase if they have all been used.

Something to note - you have to enter your email address when entering the code -I don’t know if the  code gets tied to the email address somehow (perhaps the first time you enter it?), or whether you can enter any email address, so you might end up having to use the email address of the original purchaser. Might be worth checking with them. 

[RobertI]

The other thing to note about the starsense app is the wonderful way they have executed it. As you follow the bright orange chevrons to move closer to the object, it automatically zooms in, and then changes colour when you have arrived, based on the gyro movements. Because the gyros are not completely reliable, It then does a plate solve and moves the target to reflect how far away you actually are and you can home in exactly. Sometimes it is initially slightly off, but if moving a long way across the sky it can be a long way off, so the platesolve seems essential for that final accurate homing in. You can also move the scope around the sky and the planetarium will show you where you are pointing, displaying the brighter objects just like Sky safari does. You can then tap the object and it will guide you there. Brilliant. 

[Elp]

I've been wanting to adapt this, but surely there's another much cheaper way. So I've looked at Skeye (developer has also released a camera version which plate solves). When I've got the time I will devise a finder shoe and phone bracket combo and will try it.

For iOS there's also psalign though I haven't used it.

Edited May 27, 2023 by Elp

[bosun21]

1 hour ago, Elp said:

I've been wanting to adapt this, but surely there's another much cheaper way. So I've looked at Skeye (developer has also released a camera version which plate solves). When I've got the time I will devise a finder shoe and phone bracket combo and will try it.

For iOS there's also psalign though I haven't used it.

The PS align is better than the Skeye by being more accurate in target acquisition however I found the Starsense to be superior to them all.

[RobertI]

2 hours ago, Elp said:

developer has also released a camera version which plate solves

It will be interesting to see what they come up with there, and also interesting to understand how restrictive Celestron’s patents are in this area (I did some research here  out of idle curiosity, but by no means comprehensive). 

[markse68]

2 hours ago, Elp said:

(developer has also released a camera version which plate solves). When I've got the time I will devise a finder shoe and phone bracket combo and will try it.

interesting- been waiting for someone else to do it. 

Mark

[AstroKeith]

I am surprised the patent describing the plate-solving was granted. It seems no different from how astrometry.net, ASTAP etc do it.

The second patent is careful to restrict to manually steered scopes.

They only seem to be applying for patents in the US and China? I did a worldwide search and couldnt find any more.

Edited May 27, 2023 by AstroKeith

[Elp]

I don't really understand on what grounds a patent was granted, fair enough on the hardware side, but patenting software for star finding? If this was a common thing no new software would ever get developed in any field.

Edited May 27, 2023 by Elp

[markse68]

12 minutes ago, AstroKeith said:

The second patent is careful to restrict to manually steered scopes.

If you designed a software to guide a users phone to a target and they just happened to strap it to a telescope with some rubber bands unbeknownst to you, i wonder if that would infringe on that patent? 🤔

[Ratlet]

Not actually read the patents but usually there must be a novel step for a patent so presumably there must be one, perhaps in the way it displays the results rather than the way it calculates it?

You got the patent numbers handy?

[markse68]

3 hours ago, RobertI said:

It will be interesting to see what they come up with there, and also interesting to understand how restrictive Celestron’s patents are in this area (I did some research here  out of idle curiosity, but by no means comprehensive). 

they’re linked in Roberts’s post above

Mark

[Ratlet]

Cheers @markse68.  I'm guessing somehow the sun total of the claims in the patent add up to something novel.  Doubt it though.  The patent office is bombarded by thousands of claims a year and the quality of a lot of them is garbage.

But they have the patent and proving that it is a bad patent or doesn't apply can be expensive so it works as a deterrent 

[Starfazed]

It does sound a rather wonderful concept. But if it's not a stupid question, I live in a Bortle 8 area and can barely even see Polaris with my naked eye after I've been out in the centre of the local park for half an hour. Are mobile phone cameras sensitive enough for the few stars visible under such conditions to the naked eye to be visible enough to the phone for the software to work?

[markse68]

The phone can do what your eye can’t- integrate over long exposure. So it can see more stars than your eyes can. I’m in bortle 8-9 SE London and it works well. It loses the platesolving close to the horizon but then the imu in the phone takes over and gets you close enough. I just swing it back up more vertical to re-register it every now and then.

Mark

[cajen2]

What really irritates me is that, when I first wanted to buy a scope, StarSense had only just been introduced. I asked about it on here, as it seemed ideal to combat my heavily light-polluted skies, and was told not to bother - just an expensive gadget. I would have avoided a lot of grief if I'd ignored the advice! 😆

[RobertI]

My understanding is that Starsense has had three incarnations; the first was the Skyprodigy scopes (no longer available) where the camera was built into the mount and not the scope; the second was the separate starsense camera which can be mounted on any scope and is connected to the mount, and the third was the current starsense app ‘push-to’ solution. My recollection is that the SkyProdigy mounts were not that well received - I’m not sure why, but I have an old one and it is temperamental  - when it works it’s great and the alignment is reasonably good, but sometimes it just fails to self-align. The concept of the camera being in the mount, is not the best to be honest and it also has a pitiful database. I think the Sky Prodigy mounts gave Starsense a bad name for a long while, but latest incarnation is wonderful, albeit a push-to solution. I think it’s only a matter of time before the Starsense app can control the mount too, rendering the current Starsense camera/handset product redundant. 

Edited May 28, 2023 by RobertI

[PeterStudz]

On 27/05/2023 at 13:03, bosun21 said:

The PS align is better than the Skeye by being more accurate in target acquisition however I found the Starsense to be superior to them all.

I’ve no doubt that Starsense is superior to PS Align Pro but then it should be as PS Align costs peanuts - £2.99. I’ve used PS Align Pro for 14 months and it has never failed to find a target, so it’s hard to justify getting anything else. Although if someone gifted me a Starsense unit I’d happily take it off their hands

I also use PS Align to accurately find planets during the day. Recently Venus but Jupiter, Saturn and Mars too. 

 

Edited May 28, 2023 by PeterStudz