Features:

  • ENABLES automatic alignment of your Celestron computerized telescope
  • No need to identify or locate any star in the sky
  • StarSense automatically aligns your telescope, so you can begin observing in minutes
  • Aligns in 3 minutes or less - Provides advanced mount modeling?
  • Any mount with 5.x or greater is compatible with the software
Amazing device!

I apologize for the length of this review, but I thought the details might be helpful for folks interested in this awesome little gadget. My Celestron StarSense arrived last week, and I’ve had a couple of chances to try it out. I’ve used the device exactly twice, but I think my experience may provide some useful information to others who are thinking of purchasing this device. My focus is on astrophotography and my rig is 100% portable on a tripod, so alignment is a frequent chore. I held off buying the device because I had read that it had severe issues integrating with Celestron’s native polar alignment process, ASPA (All-Star Polar Alignment). Once those issues were corrected by Celestron and I read a positive review of the device in Sky and Telescope, I went ahead and bought it. So far, I’m very glad I did. After unboxing, I immediately updated the firmware on the StarSense camera and the included hand controller. Be sure to do this – as I mentioned, Celestron fixed some major problems with the software since the release of the device, and you’ll want to be sure to capture these. Be sure you have the appropriate cables and adapters ready for this. Once the firmware was updated, I attached the SS camera to my scope. I have a non-Celestron OTA, but a Celestron Advanced VX mount. This was one point of annoyance with Celestron. They provide two mounting methods – a super-solid one for Celestron OTAs, and a not-so solid one for everyone else. I was mounting to a dovetail plate, and it was annoying that I couldn’t use the more solid method just because Celestron had made the mounting holes too narrow. If they had just provided a couple of holes at the standard mounting sizes they could have given folks a lot more options. Left with the secondary mounting method, I was glad I had an extra mounting base available, because Celestron doesn’t provide one with the unit (they assume you’re replacing your finderscope with the SS camera). I sacrificed my mounted laser pointer in favor of the SS camera and continued. If you have a single finder\guider and no other mounting base available when the unit arrives, you’ll be waiting for Amazon to deliver before you can use the unit. After setting up outside and doing a rough polar alignment with a polar scope, I turned on the mount with the new HC and SS camera attached. The first thing the HC does is search for the SS camera, which it found with no problem. At startup, the HC gets a little “bossy” – there doesn’t seem to be a way to start up without going through the SSA (StarSense AutoAlign) process before doing anything else. I’m used to entering the Date\Time and location, but that didn’t seem to be an option at startup. You can press the Menu button to add those details, but I didn't know that at the time. I let the SSA do its thing, and it slewed to four different sections of the sky. I was in my side yard, where the house and trees block much of the horizon, and light pollution is fairly severe. I had also neglected to turn a bright flood light attached to my roof off, just to keep things interesting. I started quite early, and I could only see 5-10 stars visually. I noticed that the HC was reporting that it was finding dozens of stars in areas of the sky where I still couldn’t see any. After a couple of minutes, the SSA wrapped up and reported success. At this point, I was 90% certain that the device hadn’t actually done anything – it was just a little too quick and easy. I told the HC to find Albireo. There it was – off center, but within the FOV of my 20mm eyepiece. Not bad. I told it to find Antares in the south. There it was. Whoa. At this point, Celestron has you resolve the error between the SS camera and your telescope by performing a centering procedure. This is done in the HC’s software and doesn’t involve adjusting the camera physically, which was a relief – I think I’ve had enough “dance of the thumbscrews” for one lifetime. The HC has a process for this that involves centering the star in your eyepiece and then confirming that it is centered with the HC. This was simple enough, but the (printed) instruction manual actually has a mistake in it about the steps in the process. It's a good idea to just download the (corrected) online manual if you buy this device. After the centering procedure, the HC tells you that you will need to repeat the SSA process. At this point it was a little unclear whether it expected me to simply run the process again or actually reset my mount to the alignment marks and start over. Thankfully, the former seemed to work just fine. Now, I had done all of this before entering the date, time or my current location. It seemed wrong to move on to polar alignment without entering that data, but then again – does the HC need to know the time or location if it knows the positions of all of the stars, especially if you’re not targeting solar system objects? The HC certainly didn’t seem concerned about it – I had to go menu surfing to even find where to enter the date\time\location – I was never prompted for the information. I went ahead and entered the info and the HC told me to perform SSA again, which I did. The polar alignment process was simple. ASPA normally has two steps – the first where you center a star using the direction buttons on the HC, then the second when you’re asked to center the same star using the mount’s ALT and AZ alignment knobs. With SSA, the first step is done automatically and the user is left with the ALT and AZ adjustments. After the centering\calibration process and ASPA, any stars or objects I selected were perfectly centered in the reticle eyepiece. I spent some time selecting objects near the four points of the compass and just being amazed when they all came up dead center. I started guiding and did some test shots using the CCD – I had perfect pinpoint stars for 12 minute exposures. That night I took 14 12-minute exposures of the Pelican Nebula and had some of the sharpest, roundest stars I’ve ever imaged. Long story short - ASPA was very easy and very accurate. On the second night out, I was just doing a rough alignment so I could take pictures of the moon with my bigger scope. I simply took the device off my refractor and put it onto my SCT, put the OTA on the mount, hooked it up, turned it on and let it align. I started even earlier that night, with only a few stars visible to these middle-aged eyes. No re-centering or fine-tuning, no entry of date or location, no polar alignment. A couple of minutes later, the SSA was done and the GOTO put the moon in the FOV of my 20mm eyepiece on the first try – this is with a 10” SCT – the FOV was less than a moon-width. I also tried several stars and they were all close to center, despite a different OTA and not performing a new centering\calibration procedure. The bottom line: this device exceeded expectations on its first two nights out. I’d say if you have a portable setup this is a no-brainer purchase. Pros: Easy setup (other than the firmware update); easier telescope alignment; simplified ASPA; more accurate polar alignment (at least in my experience). Works in twilight, so you can start your alignment earlier. Works despite trees and\or buildings obstructing large parts of the sky. Fast. Cons: Mounting brackets aren’t all that they could be (see above). Finder mount base not included. New HC has small-print display by default – can be hard to read especially from a distance.

StarSense makes the alignment process much easier and makes observing more enjoyable. Recommended.

Just a quick positive vote for the StarSense! Just ordered it and paired it up with an AVX mount I bought a year and a half ago. I bought the USB/Serial cables to update the firmware, but had some issues with that and only got error logs (Windows 10 FWIW), but the HC firmware was actually already a June 2015 build which is fairly recent so I figured I would give it a go anyways and it worked just fine without a firmware update. I have a severely restricted view of the sky with trees all around. In the first AutoAlign, it kept pointing at the same tree over and over, but after a few minutes, it finally selected some space between the trees and had 2 of the 4 alignments complete. I walked over to turn off the porch light, lost the wi-fi link as I was using SkySafari to "connect and align" and basically screwed up the communication. It was going to start over but I decided to try the Manual Align using the HC to guide it to the open spaces more quickly. I was 4 for 4 and in 2-3 minutes, it was ready. I slewed to Sirius since it is easy to spot and in the nice open part of the sky for me and using a 15mm 82 degree eye piece (900mm Vixen 80mm scope), it put Sirius right on the edge of the view. I then centered Sirius and hit align and digitally "centered" the StarSense sensor with the scope per the manual. It asked for a realignment for which I did another manual alignment with no problems. I then dialed up Orion's nebula and it came spot on middle of view no hassle whatsoever! I was genuinely satisfied with that because it tells me that if I am trying to dial up a faint fuzzy which is sometimes hard to confirm I've put in the viewfinder, then I will likely do much better than I had been doing. This was the basic measure of success for me, quick alignment, didn't fiddle with a polar alignment other than generally point it at Polaris, and was able to dial in a Messier object. Recommended! I didn't attempt an All Star Polar Alignment and I wasn't able to quickly understand how to save the manual alignment (i tried but couldn't figure out why it wouldn't save when I went to the User Auto Align screen, I probably missed a step), but overall, being able to dial up a messier object with relatively little trouble and having so much more capability in terms of polar alignment, additional alignment points for accuracy, and saving the manual alignments when I figure that out makes this a solid value in my case. So in conclusion, the StarSense worked for me and I am happy with the equipment and would recommend it. Cheers!

BUY THE DAMN THING NOW

BOTTOME LINE: buy this thing now! Full Review: My first attempt using this was a disaster. was ready to return the product. The manual is well out of date (lists the Hand controller with a phone jack port, its actually a usb mini which is awesome, and many other examples). I bout this for astrophotography for my celestron AVX and CGEM mounts. I have an edgeHD 8 OTA, and a 4.25in stellavue triplet apo. I followed hte instructions as best I could accounting for it being well out of date, as there have been many firm ware upgrades since the instructions were writing, and it needs a massive update. The most critical error is the first few lints of the instructions says to not bother leveling the mount. This will be prove to be my undoing. First night I went exactly by the directions in the book, and this thing was so inaccurate I was enraged. Stayed up to 3am on a work night as I couldn't let it go, power cycling and re aligning, adding 10 ref points to the 4 points it takes automatically, and this thing was 100s of arc minutes off. It was bad. My first concern was the steps listed in the manual did not automatically occur as it was listed. For instance there option to set the date and time, location, etc did not pop up, luckily I have experience with the mounts already and knew how to jump through menus and make these adjustments, but Im on the east coast and it defaults to California. But its worth the trouble to have the usb interface on the HC. The most egregious error was the instructions state you do not have to level the scope. You dont have to polar align the scope (this is true). Night # 2 I decide to give it one more go before sending this thing back, and OHHH am I glad I did. I decided to use my normal setup routine for when I use the 2+4 manual alignment procedure, so I levels the scope ( use use a 10" 3$ level from harbor freight) which only takes like 2 minutes of extra time adusting the tripod leg lengths, I did a cursory polar alignment with my polar alignment scope, wasnt dark so this was not very accurate, I made sure date and time were correct and they were, turn on the mount, it takes about 20 secs for it to give me the message that the mount has synced with the camera, it says press align to start the alignment, so I do. I sit back and it about 90-120 secs, it slews on its on to 4 areas of they sky, stopping for 15-30 secs on each to take a pic, of course you dont see this pic, but the HC LED display keeps you constantly updated on what its doing, including the % complete while its calculating the stars it discovered to its database, and how many stars it sees in each frame. If the scope points towards something blocking the sky, such as my house, it quickly identifies this and moves to a new area. After the initial automated process, it suggests for astrophotography purposes, but I decided to slew to Virgo just to see how accurate this was, and BAM, damn near top dead center. U use backyard EOS and a canon T5i, and in the frame and focus panel of BYEOS, this thing was just at tiny bit off center, I dont know the arc secs or arc minutes, but it was about 4 widths of the star virgo on the screen. THis was darn near as accurate as my manual aligment process. Slew to orion nebula. WIth my scope and the focal reducer, with teh T5i, orion takes up 1/2 the field of view on the photo, its a little off center, i set the motor to speed of 3, move a bit, snap a pic, now I know what directions to go, move the other way a few times while snapping pics, and boom its now dead center. I took 60 second exposures, oh head theres drift, so I polar align, then let it manually re-align, I slew to orion, was a litte off, move away from orion and added a ref point, moved to the other side of orion, new ref pt, did this 4 total times (took like 2 mins), and autoslew back to Orion and BAM, it was perfect. I actually moved the scope just to take it off center for visual asthetics. 60 sec exposures, no problem with the alignment, but i live in Athens GA, and the light pollution is so bad I had to cut back to 45 sec exposures. To review: Once the scope is leveled and balanced, i fire this thing up, 20 sec wait for software to load, I click one button, sit back and drink a beer until the scope stops moving (~ 2 mins), I move to the object I want to photograph, I then add 3-4 extra ref points, slew back to that object and then use the star to polar align. The polar alignment takes just about 2 mins for me to adjust the scope with manual knobs to get the star in the cross hairs. Now I auto align again (2 mins), move to a target, add 4 ref pts (2 mins), and off I freakin go. What just a few nights ago took me literally 1 hour, and this hour mind you was spent laying ont eh cold ground on my back siting starts, torquing my neck, crawling on my hands and knees to visually get these starts in my view finder to to the alignment manually... now the whole damn shabang takes 15 mins, and I do it from the comfort of a chair w/o having to put down my beer. I have used the scope every night, as I dont have to worry about the 30 min scope setup time and the 1 hour alignment, polar alignment, and realignment jsut to be killed by clouds taking out the sky and negating my efforts. The times this saves me allows me to photograph on work nights and be in bed by 11pm, to get up before work and get a few shots of an item in the wrong season, I could not be more thrilled. If this is compatible with your mount BUY IT NOW. Heres the pic:

One of the best attachments I've purchased for my GoTo scope

I wish I had bought this months ago, when I first got my Celestron Evolution. While I'm glad I did learn to use a finder scope and align my scope before a night of observation, I often got frustrated with how long it took me to do so. With the StarSense alignment attachment, I just turn everything on and let it auto-align. The first time I went through the process, I did have to do some minor adjustments to make sure the starsense was aligned with my scope, but that only took a few mintues (or seconds, really). I also added a few more stars so that it aligned to more than three for better accuracy. Now, when I set up, the StarSense aligns my scope in under five minutes and then I'm ready for a night of viewing. When I tell my scope to GoTo a particular object, it goes there and is almost perfectly aligned with maybe just a few adjustments to center the object. If you are like me and just want to get out there and see what is out there, you should consider getting this option. It makes it so much easier, particularly if you are a new observer like I am. I freely admit that I am not an expert and have very little background in astronomy, so maybe I'm in love with this option so much because of how much easier it makes it to see the wondrous sights in the heavens. But anything that can make your life easier is good as far as I'm concerned, and this has definitely made my nights much more enjoyable, I set up my scope, let the StarSense do its thing, and I can then spend my time gazing at stars and nebulae rather than trying to get my scope aligned. It has definitely been worth it for me.

Don't give up, Update the Firmware.

What a wonderfull device for amateur astronomers. After many failed alignments because there were so many stars in the eyepiece and not being able to identify which was which, the StarSense was eagerly awaited. At first I would have given this device a very low rating because it failed to do its base function, it would not align the telescope. (Celestron 9.25 SCT AVX) It was very frustrating because the "Auto - Align" function would just lock up. I have an obstructed view, many trees, and the scope would just point at the willow in the west and be confounded in what to do. Even when trying to do a "Manual - Align" I would get stuck in an endless loop. I was sadly disappointed and was ready to return it. The included instruction manual is not current or correct, that's a sad statement for Celestron, even the online manual is not correct. The Menu function button on the hand controller should be explored. So now I had a new computerized scope, the Sky Portal Wi-Fi device and app and StarSense and I still couldn't "Go-To" anything because I couldn't get an accurate alignment. Being one not easily defeated I ventured into the Web and found many others who were disappointed, but no one had all the answers, bits and pieces came together and I finally came up with "It needs a Firmware Update" (Check your cable needs) so off I went to Celestrons website and after searching around I found the updates. No YouTube videos, none of the Astronomy Forums or instructions from Celestron are correct on how to do the updates, but they are easy to do, just make sure to update Java on your computer to the newest update first. The update files come with a photo of how to cable the devices before starting the update. It is correct. Once you have JAVA updated and unzip the files everything is pretty straight forward. After three failures to update (My fault, I missed a cable) I had success. A week later I was able to try out the updates. I had purchased a 10" tablet to run the Sky Portal app on as my eyes aren't as young as they used to be and the smartphone was just to small to see in the dark. I assembled the scope and let it acclimate, I powered up the scope before dark to update the time and location, remember the "Menu" function key on the StarSense Hand Controller. Then I powered down the scope and waited until the skies were dark enough to begin calibration. I powered up the scope with all devices (StarSense Camera, Hand Controller and Sky Portal Wi-Fi Module) securely attached to the mount. (Remember at this point to remove the lens cap on the StarSense Camera) I then started the Tablet and in "Settings" connected to the Scope via Wi-Fi. All of the Sky Portal documentation said that everything would recognize each other, I was skepitcal. I then chose "Connect and Align" from the app on the tablet. Sure enough the scope swung to the west and the willow. The app said it was taking a picture but couldn't resolve the plate, imagine to my surprise that the scope just swung to a different point in the sky and continued the alignment. After a few minutes and 4 "Solved Plates" I was asked to choose a calibration star to align the Starsense Camera with the OTA. I chose Vega as it is the brightest star from my location and there is no mistaking it for another in the eyepiece, it just lights up the eyepiece. I was then instructed to do another Auto alignment and Bingo, it was Magic. Finally a computerized Go To scope that does just that. It goes to everthing I ask of it, Objects pretty much centered in a 12 MM eyepiece. (195X on my scope.) I am very satisfied with how everything is finally functioning and is fully integrated. The only additional expense I incurred was the need to communicate via Serial device to the scope, I purchased a "TRENDnet TU-S9 USB to Serial Converter" cable from Amazon that facilitated that.

Accurate Auto-alignment Releases the Power of a GOTO telescope

Aligning a Celestron GOTO telescope "by hand" is a time-consuming drag, and difficult to do in light-polluted environments like the one I live in. The StarSense auto-aligner turns that task into a 2-3 minute hands-off experience that requires minimal set-up by the user. I do have one big caveat. When I attempted my first alignment, it failed miserably, and the software in StarSense had altered the latitude of my location (which I had previously typed in as part of the set-up). Upon going to Celestron Support, I found out that I needed to upgrade the firmware for the StarSense. It turned out that the firmware in the one I bought from Amazon was dated 2014, and there had been six subsequent upgrades published by Celestron. Fortunately, I know enough about computers so that the task of upgrading the firmware was not too difficult. After that the auto-alignment performed very well. That Celestron took the trouble to do six upgrades in four years is a tribute to their support team, but that does seem like a lot of upgrades. Now that the power of the GOTO feature of my telescope has been enhanced by fast and accurate auto-alignment, I expect I will be using my telescope a lot more than I have been.

It aligned with high clouds and only planets and moon visible to naked eye. Was blown away!

I had first light use on this the first weekend I had this at our star party. Because I didn't want to use my existing finder scope mounts (already in use) and wanted to use the original Celestron bracket (designed for Celstron scopes, but I have an Orion Astrograph scope) I ended up mounting it on the front edge of my dovetail mount. This was a good place that kept it out of the way. That was the hardest part of the entire setup literally, and obviously wasn't one of their designed setups. The rest was a piece of cake. Just plug and play on this thing. I have a Celestron CGEM DX mount with the GPS addon, so I had to order the Celestron AUX port splitter to use them both. Can be found on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DQTYNAA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 It comes with an updated hand controller to work with the StarSense and adds a couple of features like 4 line display that now shows the RA/DEC of the object you are pointed at. Very nice. Like I said, plug and play. I also use a PoleMaster for polar alignment so that was done first, although manual for the StarSense says it only needs a rough polar alignment. Since I do Astrophotography, I went ahead and did the pole alignment with the polemaster anyway to maximize my tracking. Fired up the mount and right way it found everything, including the Celestron GPS I have on it, and the StarSense, and was asking permission to align. I gave it the ok and off it went....and went....and went. I was starting to have real doubts about it now, because it started even pointing at the ground! Holy cow that isn't right. Then it dawned on me, and I'm embarrassed to admit such a newbie mistake, but I had failed to remove the lens cap on the camera! DOH! So removed that and started it again and after about 5 minutes of slewing it announced it was done. So yeah, check your lens cap before you start. LOL Sent to GoTo over to Vega shining bright to test it, and it was within the view of a 22mm eyepiece, but not centered. Now the manual states you have to do a centering procedure at this point that should be familiar to you, and that just lets it fine tune what the camera sees with what your scope sees in the center. It's essentially and electronic collimation between the scope and the camera, rather than you having to line all that up manually. Very nice and EASY! After you do that very quick procedure, it wants to do another alignment procedure and in 5 minutes or so it was done. If you don't move your scope from site to site, you likely won't have to do that second part very often, but it's pretty quick anyway, and I recommend doing it every time if you do astrophotography. After that procedure I slewed to Vega again and it was much closer to center so I ran the centering procedure again and it was even closer still, though not completely exact, but would get just about any object in your eyepiece as long as you aren't using a 3mm or something. All in all, minus the time the fiasco of not removing the lens cap took, it was ready to start viewing in under 15 minutes with very minimal input from me and it was tracking wonderfully all night. Now, the next night even impressed me more. After a long afternoon of rain our night was plagued with high clouds. We could visually with naked eye only make out the moon, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn and the occasional Vega, and even those would come and go. We decided to give the StarSense a run, just to see what it could do for the hell of it, never expecting it to work. It took it about twice as long, but sure enough it aligned itself up! I couldn't believe it. GoTo was right on. It wasn't from the night before because I had moved the scope some because of the rain that day. We ended up being treated with some astounding views of Jupiter and Mars details with the high clouds acting as a nice filter. I was just blown away that thing aligned itself with all those clouds! I can't recommend this thing enough. Doing astrophotography, the only two things I dislike really are pole alignment and regular alignment, and of course they are absolutely critical for what I do. Between the PoleMaster (which you should also get btw) and this StarSense, it made those things actually fun! One accessory you won't regret spending money on! Be sure and read the short manual just so you have all the details of how it works in your head.

You NEED this!

I was very frustrated trying to correctly align my AVX mount and 8" Newtonian ('Celestron Advanced VX 8" Newtonian' package). I eventually learned what Polaris looks like up-close but never could be sure I was correctly aligned with the other alignment stars because a zoomed in view looks pretty much the same as a zoomed out view: many, many stars, some bright and some dim. I spent hours going back and forth between the eyepiece and a star atlas, attempting to verify I had the correct alignment stars but I only got a decent and correct alignment ONCE in six months. Enter the StarSense. This thing is magic. You replace your hand controller with the new one that comes with the StarSense and replace your finder scope with the StarSense camera. To align, you just have to point your scope roughly at Polaris then start the alignment. It takes a minute or two, slewing the telescope to different areas of the sky in order to find its position and then it's done! My location is very dark but also heavily obstructed by trees and the alignment has never failed to find enough stars to align. Magic. The only times it doesn't work is if the mount is set up wrong (loose clutches or not balanced) or the several times I left the StarSense lens cap on... When you run it the very first time, you should perform the one-time calibration; the un-calibrated alignment should be good enough that the target object should be somewhere in the eyepiece at 50x mag (e.g., 20mm eyepiece in a 1000mm scope). For the one-time cal., you center the object and hit calibrate and it improves the accuracy even more. I should note that even the calibrated alignment isn't perfect - it does not usually put the target object dead center in the eyepiece. But it is close, much closer than I ever got with a eyeball alignment. Without this gadget, I think I would have given up on stargazing and sold my scope. A manual alignment is just too difficult for a solo beginner, especially with a Newtonian where you often must contort yourself just to see into the eyepiece, never mind then trying to correlate the view with a star chart to see if you are in the right place. I didn't buy a telescope to learn the patterns of the stars around Polaris, Mizar, or Betelgeuse, all while assuming some cramped position and either freezing or being eaten by bugs. I wanted to see the good stuff, and with the StarSense you can skip all that and go straight to the good stuff! The planets are easy enough to find once you become a bit acquainted with the sky because they are so hella bright, but with a good alignment for your EQ mount, you can keep them centered long enough to swap for a high-power eyepiece and have a really good look. Or you can connect your camera and snap a picture. But for me, where the StarSense really shines, and justifies it's rather high price tag, is that it enables the full potential of the go-to EQ mount system for finding deep sky objects (DSO). Like I said, the planets are so bright that you can tell if they aren't in the view, but with DSOs like nebula and galaxies, you can barely see anything, often nothing, in the eyepiece with your eyes. It's only when you connect your camera and take a 30-60s long photo that they become visible because they are so faint. Without the automatic alignment of the StarSense, I NEVER would have found anything except maybe the Orion Nebula. The StarSense is a must have for a beginner like me. Since I got it, I know MUCH more about the night sky now and, ironically, could probably do a manual alignment without it. But I never would have got there without it; it got me over the hump. I did have to switch to the smaller bracket that comes with the StarSense to match the finder bracket on my C8-N. You can also add a second mount to your scope (may involve drilling) to keep your finder. You should also make sure, before you start, that you latitude is set correctly on the mount. This is a one-time mechanical adjustment for your location that you should only have to change if you move your scope more than 50 miles or so north or south. The mount should also be on level ground, unless you can come up with a way to level it yourself. The Wi-Fi dongle is a must-have accessory, by the way, and is perfectly integrated with the StarSense. You can do everything from your phone, initiate alignment, calibrate, etc. I hate the hand controllers, but that's for a different review.

What a Great Device!!

This is the best thing since ice cream! It DOES do an automatic alignment of your telescope and, once the initial set-up procedures for the device are completed and a couple additional reference start are added it will center whatever you tell it to slew to exactly in the eyepiece. I even find it is accurate enuf to center the object on the sensor of my Mead DSI camera without needing to first find the object in an eyepiece. This is so good I have even ordered a better guidescope for my telescope to improve tracking for long time exposures with the DSI. This alignment device is the best money I have added to my telescope in the 6 years I have had it! Only problem is that, with my 10" Newtonian scope, the camera-to-aux port cable could be about a foot longer. (P.S., if you get one and decide to lengthen the cable be very careful because some of the 6p6c RJ-12 phone cables are NOT wired straight-through but, rather, have the cable connections reversed end-for-end. Compare the color placement of the wires in the connectors on each end with the connectors held side by side. Colors must line up the same on both)

5 stars although not perfect

I'm giving 5 stars because I think this products benefits outweigh it's faults. My impressions will be ongoing as it arrived in the mail yesterday, and I used it last night. So my perpective is from that of a newb. I ordered it from Amazon together with the Celestron Wifi adapter for my Celestron CPC 1100 scope (also from Amazon). My biggest worries was that it would need a firmware upgrade and that it wouldn't talk well with the scope or the Wifi adapter or phone planetarium software. All those worries were unfounded, as it worked very well without any firmware upgrades. It was very easy to set up if you follow the controller prompts which also matched the how-to video that Celestron put out. At first it slewed for about 5 minutes without locking on anything before I realized that the cap was still on the lens (duh!) so don't forget to take the cap off. Once the cap was off, it found about 100 stars in every calibration in my moderately light polluted skies and minimal view of the sky (maybe could see about 50% of the sky because of houses and trees). But it handled it cleanly. Would the alignment have been better if I had better views? Possibly, as the final alignment was not dead accurate, with the targets being slightly off center. The images were still present in my 13 degree eyepiece though, and a tap of the directional button put it in the center. Combined with the Wifi Adapter, this felt like next-level astronomy in the 21st century. Very cool! In about an hour, I was able to observe about 25 deep sky objects, and it was a blast. No regrets, and i think this will help me use my scope more, which is a good thing. I appreciate this too, because I don't have the best back, and this device saves me from the awkward contortions of looking through a straight finder scope that came with the CPC 1100. That alone makes this worth it. The bad? I had to calibrate it to a star three times, which felt like it wasted a lot of time. This was because I did it first with the hand controller, then with the Celestron SkyPortal app, then with Sky Safari 6 Pro. It would have been nice if it just remembered the settings, but hey, maybe I won't have to do it ever again. And since it wasn't perfectly aligned, I have to wonder if I did something wrong or if it just isn't 100% accurate. Recommended.

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