Celestron StarSense Accessory

StarSense Accessory Pre-Order

Celestron is projecting availability in June of 2013. The suggested US retail price is $329. Skies Unlimited is currently accepting pre-orders at $309 for shipment when available. No deposit is required, and you may cancel your order at any time prior to actual shipment.

Technical Notes

Celestron's StarSense technology was introduced on the SkyProdigy series telescopes in the fall of 2011. We have used several samples of this telescope and find that it works well under typical urban and suburban conditions, successfully aligning the telescope in about two minutes. StarSense automatically moves the telescope to a home position and begins three photographs of the sky. The StarSense computer counts the stars in each photo and attempts to evaluate the asterisms. Under ideal conditions, meaning no obstructed views, the alignment requires three photos that are separated by 60 degrees in azimuth. This process moves from left to right, therefore, ideal conditions are those where there is an unobstructed view of at least 120 degrees to the right of where the telescope is pointed when the alignment begins.

In order for this process to work, the optical axis of the telescope must be calibrated to that of StarSense camera. This is done at the factory for SkyProdigy series telescope, but it will be the responsibility of the user when adding this accessory to another telescope. The content below is taken from the existing SkyProdigy manual and describes this process.

StarSense Camera - Excerpts from SkyProdigy User Manual

StarSense Camera settings are an advanced level feature that allows you to calibrate the telescopes camera and customize the camera control settings.

Calibrate – Your telescope’s camera may need to be calibrated if the telescope cannot find objects after being successfully aligned. To Calibrate the camera:

1. Slew the telescope to the bright star that you are trying to find.
2. Select Calibrate from the StarSense menu option.
3. The hand control will display the current pixel position of the center of the camera sensor.
4. Use the direction buttons to manually center the bright star in the eyepiece. Press ENTER.

SkyProdigy will then take an image of the sky and calibrate the center of the camera sensor with the star seen in the eyepiece.

Compatible Telescopes: NexStar SE Series, CPC, CPC DX, NexStar GPS Series, CGE Pro, Advanced VX, CG-5, CGEM, CGEM DX, CGE, (NexStar SLT with Aux Splitter see suggested accessories tab above.)

Not Compatible with: NexStar i Series, Ultima 2000, Early generation GoTo mounts (such as Compustar)