Rating  - Decent Scope
I purchased the scope from a chain camera shop during a 50% off clearance sale. The scope appears to be well made. The tripod and mounting are solid.
The optics seem pretty good but it has been hard to get a sharp focus on Jupiter and Saturn. Moon viewing has been great. I bought the lens accessory kit as well but have been unable to get a sharp view on the planets.
I have not had much luck with the sky align. Half the time the align fails and when I do get a good alignment it has only been marginal at finding objects. I normally resort to a sky map for navigation. The spotter scope is great when properly aligned to the telescope and it is easy to align. The scope is much better than the Tasco toy scope I had when I was a teen, but I wish I could get a sharp focus on the planets.
Rating  - Pretty good telescope.
Found this easy to use. I chose this one to buy as my first telescope after reading several reviews concerning a few different telescopes and comparing prices vs features.
The NexStar 4 SE telescope set up rather quickly. Sky align worked well, though sometimes the scope seemed to become less accurate as the hours went buy, and I tried to re-align to different stars but eventually I encountered the same alignment results.
The motor does sometimes jump and looses track of objects. Approaching the objects from a certain side seemed to help, as mentioned in the instruction book.
I did have to buy the additional eyepiece/filter kit. Clarity was rather good up to 6mm eyepiece, though the 4mm was pretty blurred, even for moon views.
Although the AC adaptor is a necessity for continuous power, I found out I already had one that fit my telescope from a car seat back massage/heater cushion which also had a car cig adaptor (which I bought for $19.99).
The computer info included in the hand controller is great though some of the 40,000 objects might not be viewable. I had problems finding some nebula and galaxies, maybe that are too faint.
I have seen Andromeda Galaxy, Orion Nebula, great Moon views, a very blurred mars view (cannot see any features), and extremely blurred Uranus (basically just blue color blurred).
I would have given it a 5 out-of 5 had the motor tracking been smoother, alignment stayed accurate. Besides that it met my expectations.
Rating  - Fantastic Telescope
This is a great telescope for many reasons. First, it is very easy to use. Most telescopes out there, even if they are computerized, are still difficult to align to the night sky before beginning use. The Nexstar 4SE with the sky align makes it fool proof because you only need to point it to 3 bright objects in the sky with no need to know what they are. One of the easiest ways to align it to the night sky is using a the Solar System Align. If you don't want to choose and point it at 3 bright objects, you can choose the moon. The moon is very easy to spot and easy to point the telescope. To me, this is the easiest alignment of all. After a few minutes setting them up, I found Jupiter easily after using the moon as the alignment object.
Secondly, for the price range, it is very well made and sturdy. Most of the components are metal which appears to make them rigid and durable. A rigid telescope makes them sturdy and shake free. It's 40,000 object database gives you enough things to look at for years and years.
The 4" optics on this is superb and the overall package is well worth the money. It is great for looking at planetary objects and deep sky.
Highly recommended.
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Customer Reviews for Celestron,11049,050234110495,0050234110495,B000GUFOBO, |
