Celestron nextstar help!!

[JASOND]

Could anybody give me some useful tips I am completely new to using a telescope though have a lifelong interest in astronomy , may be mad ?? but now need some serious assistance with Celestron nextstar 8" se

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[Demonperformer]

I have its little brother (the 6SE). Not sure exactly what tips you are after, so if I am completely off track, please say and I'm sure any specific questions can be answered.

First thing I would say is that time spent setting up carefully will be repaid in an easier observing session. Make sure the tripod is as level as possible. When setting the location and time be as accurate as possible. Don't forget that the date is MM/DD/YY (not DD/MM/YY).

If you are doing a skyalign, I always found including the moon or planets made it more likely to fail (I always had enormous difficulty getting skyalign to work at all, but others on the forum have no problem).

Also, if you are running it on batteries, they have a very short life. You will really need some sort of power tank (Maplins do a nice 17Ah 'jump starter').

HTH

BTW: welcome to the forum

[JASOND]

Thanks you have just answered 2 of 3 questions straight off , I did use the planets to align and it pointed to the floor !! and was seriously thinking about power pack after my third pack of batteries ! also found a comment on dew sheilds you made last year very helpful

I understand I can get bigger aperture eye pieces , would this be helpful with older eyesight !! or in your opinion a waste of money

[cgarry]

Also put your long/lat in carefully as the mount only asks for it once and remembers it for future use. I originally put mine in the wrong way round and could not figure out why the the align kept failing. Once I managed to enter all the details correctly, set the tripod up level and run from a Maplin's jump starter rather than AA batteries then the 3 star align worked for me every time, and I routinely used Jupiter as one of the 'stars' to make it difficult for the mount!

I will leave your EP question to somebody with better knowledge than me.

Cheers,

Chris

[rowan46]

If you are still having problems with alignment use 2 star it doen't need time and long lat then. polaris and betelgeuse work well at the moment (betelgeuse top left of orion)then list select your planet and input date and time and your set up I don't use coordinates at all but has been said levelling the scope is fairly critical. this site is useful for nexstar owners http://www.nexstarsite.com/index.html

[cgarry]

If you are still having problems with alignment use 2 star it doen't need time and long lat then.

It does not? I am pretty sure my 6SE mount used to require time, long and lat no matter what method of align you used, I would always have used 2 star align if that was the case as I found putting in the time a complete pain. I could be wrong, especially since I no longer have the mount.

[CGolder]

;-)

[cgarry]

...especially since I no longer have the mount.

;-)

But I know a man that does...

[rowan46]

admittedly mines an older model I only need to input date and time if I want to find a planet otherwise I just align on 2 stars of my own choosing and I'm done.by the way I don't mean auto 2 star align. on my model there is just 2 star align

[CGolder]

using auto 2 star align which is the only method i can see of 2 star then lat and long need to be correct. it doesnt prompt for them but uses it from memory.

First time i tried that, and the 2 star auto is awesome, used polaris as a 2nd star and it was in the FOV, that's impressive.

[rowan46]

my apologies then the newer models must have dropped 2 star align

[rowan46]

have just checked the 6se manual and there is a 2 star align its on page 14

[Demonperformer]

Yes, but the stars that it offers as options for the 2-star align are determined by what the computer thinks is above the horizon which in turn is determined by the location and date/time you have input.

[rowan46]

Yes, but the stars that it offers as options for the 2-star align are determined by what the computer thinks is above the horizon which in turn is determined by the location and date/time you have input.

fair enough I bow to your superior knoweledge. I always wondered why people were so hung up on the coordinates. I don't think I'll bother getting a new nexstar then all I have to do with my old one is align on 2 stars I know from the choice it gives me.

[Midpoint]

I definitely recommend getting a power pack. The Nexstar can become rather "erratic" when the batteries start to run low which can leave you wondering if it's broken. I'll also add another vote for auto 2 star align, much quicker and easier than skyalign.

[Demonperformer]

I would agree that the 2-star align option is more reliable than skyalign (although there are many on the forum who would contest this), the only thing is you do need to know enough of the sky to know which star you are looking at ... some newbies won't have that knowledge.

[vulcan]

I tried 2 star align last night for the first time with my NexStar 6se. The first try (on Rigel and Aldeberan) failed but the second (on Rigel and Capella) was accepted. Then when I used GOTO it pointed in the approximate direction but not as accurately as I would have liked. My time and location was correct and the tripod was level. When I previously used SkyAlign, it seemed to be more accurate.

PS I was using a power tank!

[CGolder]

I find sky align very good, providing it gets the stars correct. With Sky align it is doing a 3 star alignment so it should be better than 2 star. I have only had it once where it have the wrong stars.

Either way.. terrific mount. I am falling for my C6 now and the 10" SCT stays in the Shed.. oh dear

[Midpoint]

I don't think skyalign actually uses all three stars for alignment. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that it uses two stars for alignment and the third to check it has picked the right stars. So in theory, 2 star align should be just as accurate as skyalign.

You can check this as once aligned as you still only have two alignment stars listed. If using three stars was more accurate, I'm sure they would have provided an option to use three named stars similar to the auto 2 star mode