Celestron 11069 NexStar 8 SE Computerised Telescope

Celestron has always produced superior products, as is this one. The computer control makes it easy to find objects in the sky, but it requires a lot of setup. The tripod must be carefully leveled before attaching the telescope, then you must enter the actual time and date, then find up to 3 stars to get it lined up.

Also, the manual was written in 2006, and the directions differ in some areas with the hardware. However, they did include a 2016 update that covers most of the differences. But I’m definitely happy with my purchase.

The night sky is more better visible with naked eyes rather than watching through the lens of the telescope that is provided.

There are over four hundred reviews here for this telescope, so I won’t cover all of the technical details already discussed; instead, I’ll hit on some of the things I still had questions about before buying the Nexstar 8SE.

One of the hard things about choosing a telescope is knowing how you want to use it. Whether you want to look at planets (which are super bright) or deep space objects (which are super dim) affects your choice. A scope with tons of magnification from a long focal length may be great for Saturn but have too much zoom for things like the Andromeda Galaxy.

Portability is also a factor. Can you carry the entire assembled scope out on to the deck yourself each night, or do you need to spend an hour lugging it out piecemeal, assembling, leveling, and aligning it? Once it’s set up, how easy is it to find objects? If you want to look at Jupiter and the Moon – piece of cake…but what about objects too faint to see with your naked eye? Do you have the time and skill to read star charts under a red light, hunting-and-pecking across the night sky searching for dim fuzzies?

Lastly, do you want to take photos of your view? If you want exposures of more than a few seconds, does your mount have a way to compensate for the Earth’s rotation to prevent your stars from blurring to streaks? If you’re taking pictures of big things, like a nebula, will you have to make a mosaic because your scope has too much magnification to fit it all in frame?

I thought about all of these, and chose the Nexstar 8SE. It is a great scope and fairly easy to use (although not as easy as Celestron’s “no knowledge of the night sky needed” slogan suggests). Here’s how it fares for my selection criteria:

Portability:
If hours of free time are needed between setup and gazing, the scope will be relegated to weekend use only. That may not seem bad, but consider that out of those weekends, it’ll further be whittled down to ones with clear nights. So, if I don’t want a scope I can use only once or twice a month, I need something portable. The 8SE weighs 33 lbs fully assembled (and can easily be separated into three lighter components). So, imagine picking up a 16 lb bowling bowl in each hand and walking out onto the deck. If you think you could do that, you can carry the 8SE out. I leave mine fully assembled and just carry it out myself whenever there are clear skies. It takes two minutes. If it’s too heavy, there are three thumb-tightened knobs that quickly separate the tripod from the mount and tube, splitting the weight in half.

Type of Astronomy:
The 8SE has a 2000 mm focal length and 8″ aperture. 2000 mm is two meters (6.5 feet!) so you’d expect the tube to be at least 6.5 feet long unless it can bend space and time. Turns out, it does – well, not literally – but it’s a Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope so it uses both reflectors and refractors to double-up the light path, resulting in a very short, fat tube that is highly portable. It’s a great “best of both worlds” solution. High focal length (which translates to magnification) for planetary and lunar views and wide aperture (which translates to brightness and detail) for views of dim objects like galaxies. For me, it’s perfect. I can bounce around the night sky seeing all of the planets and everything in the Messier catalog (globular clusters, nebula, and galaxies). The 8SE comes with a diagonal and a single 1.25″ 25mm Plossl eyepiece that is one of my favorite eyepieces for this scope. With it, you will clearly see a small Saturn with its rings and shadows, or the disc of Jupiter with small cloud bands and its four largest moons. Deep-sky objects will be faint, dim cotton balls. Of course, you can increase the magnification by buying additional eyepieces or increase the contrast of DSOs with filters. I have a small refractor scope that uses 1.25″ eyepieces and filters, and all of them are interchangeable with the 8SE.

Astrophotography:
I think it surprised me that most of those awesome astrophotography pics we’ve seen that look like Hubble telescope photos are taken with cameras or sensors attached to small refractor scopes. They’re all taken on equatorial mounts that are polar aligned, rotating like clockwork to compensate for the Earth’s rotation. The default 8SE cannot do this. It has an alt-az mount, not an EQ. Although it will track an object and keep it centered, it’s just not able to rotate in the direction that the sky does. As a result, the object will spin in place over time, and all the neighboring stars will orbit it, leaving streaks. You can purchase an EQ wedge that tilts the entire mount onto a polar axis but to be honest for the price and added weight of the 15 lb wedge you could just get a Sky Watcher mount and tripod and plop a DSLR with a decent lens on it, taking some nice wide-field long-exposure photos. That being said, short-exposure photography works great on the 8SE. A cheap t-adapter lets me attach my DSLR directly to the back of the scope. I can manage fifteen-second exposures without star trails. I took the attached photo of the Hercules Cluster this way (by the way – for reference – the Hercules cluster does not look like this to your eye in the scope. In the scope, it is a milky cotton ball). So, can you throw a couple of thousand dollars to convert the 8SE into a long-exposure astrophotography scope? Sure – but I would suggest instead using that money to buy a separate, dedicated mount and tripod for DSLR photography.

Ease of Finding Objects:
First, you can just use the keypad arrows to slew the scope wherever you want without bothering to align it. Line up a star or planet in the red dot finder and just have a look; however, if you want the telescope to find and track it, you’ll have to align it. There are four ways to do this: 1) 3-object auto-align: center the scope on any three bright stars or planets and the controller will plate-solve to figure out what they are. You don’t even need to know or tell it their names; however, every time I tried this, it failed. 2) 2-star auto-align: center the scope on one star and tell the controller what it is, then it picks the second star and you center it. Works sometimes, but the scope has no way of knowing if its chosen star is obstructed (by trees, neighbor’s houses). 3) 2-star manual align: You pick two stars, tell the controller their names, and center them. Always works for me. 4) 1-star manual align: Same as two-star, but less accurate. 5) I know I said there were only four options, but a fifth option is to buy the somewhat-expensive Star Sense accessory, which is a camera that will do all of this for you.

I find that the two-star align is accurate for the part of the sky you chose when picking alignment stars, but quickly loses accuracy when you swing to distant parts of the sky. Fortunately, you can pick new alignment stars on-the-fly, so I typically align to the southern sky, see everything I want, then realign to the northern sky. When the alignment is accurate, it’s really great for finding deep space objects. I can look at a dozen DSOs in thirty minutes, where I could look at only two or three if doing it manually. The single review-star I deducted is due to the somewhat endless frustration I have with the GoTo alignment process, and that in general I haven’t been able to just align the scope to the sky, but have to realign to portions of the sky as I look in different areas. One other complaint is that the 8SE’s controller has been upgraded over time (to have a mini-USB connection instead of RS-232), but the telescope’s manual was not updated. The manual still has photos and instructions only for the old controller, including keypad buttons which are in different locations or have different names.

So, I think the 8SE hits the Venn-diagram sweet-spot intersection of portability, aperture, and focal length for me, and I’m happy with my purchase and recommend it to others searching for that same intersection.

Edit:
After six months of use, I’m very happy with this purchase. I’ve bought many accessories, including the Starsense camera (which you’ll appreciate on January nights when the telescope sets itself up while you’re inside drinking tea), a 2″ Luminos eyepiece and diagonal, and a f/6.3 focal reducer. Out of those, the focal reducer was the cheapest but had the most impact. Believe it or not, it’s possible to have too much magnification and being able to halve the scope’s focal length with the twist of a lens is great. I’ve added a photo of the Orion Nebula and Hagrid’s Dragon I took with the focal reducer. I highly recommend it as a first accessory.

The us a brilliant first scope. If it’s too expensive you could always go for the smaller 6SE.

Setup is very quick and easy, though there’s no power supply in the box, and it’ll eat through AA batteries, so either get a power supply (and extension lead), or get a “powertank” or shares in Duracell.

Once physically setup the alignment is normally very quick and easy. Tell it where you are in the world and what the time is (or buy the gps add in), and then point it at 3 bright stars…. and it’ll magically work out both where it’s pointing and where everything is. It’s proper magic.

From there you can ask the handset to take you to almost any planet, star or galaxy, and the scope will turn to it, and even better track it, keeping it centred for you to view.

The kit includes a red dot finder (do calibrate that before starting), but mine had given up the ghost already (only a few uses), and many others on the internet appear to have had problems too. I’d get a replacement or alternative as soon as possible.

All in all it makes looking at stars very simple, and there are a world of plug ins and add ins to make things better, in certain situations.

Hello everyone! I purchased a Celestron 8SE package through Amazon shortly before the Christmas holiday for me and my family (ok, mostly for me!). I wanted to write this review because I probably made a mistake buying that package, which, of course, is only an opinion which benefits from hindsight. I normally pride myself on doing adequate research before buying a product, but I guess I didn’t realize how much I wanted to try astrophotography until shortly after I received the scope in the mail. I was really drawn to the ‘goto’ capability, because I wanted my family to have an easy time getting the most out of the scope. I did read some reviews and many people posted cool pictures of the moon, solar system objects, and even some deep space objects — those seemed to be enough to convince me.

So, there are good parts of the package. The scope seems well built. In my uninformed opinion, the optics are clear and the scope came perfectly collimated. The mount, while it has deficiencies, is actually pretty easy to use. It’s also very easy to assemble and disassemble, very light, and again, in my opinion, is pretty sturdy. It’s very easy to do a three-star alignment. My first attempt was spot on and a solution was found. All of the various pieces that came with the package seemed well built, except for the spotting scope (more later) and perhaps the diagonal — it’s very cheap plastic and doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the quality of the mirror.

The bad parts? Well, they might not be bad for certain people, so I’ll leave the judgement up to you whether these issues are a ‘negative’. First, the cheapo spotting scope never worked. I did email celestron on the day after christmas and I had a new spotting scope — the upgraded version — before new years. So kudos to Celestron for their quick work to fix the problem. The package came with one single eyepiece, a 23mm plossl I think, and it’s the least clear eyepiece I now own. Now, on to the mount. I read that the mount “isn’t great” for astrophotography, and honestly, at that point, I didn’t think I’d get ‘the bug’ for it. After a couple weeks, I bought a T-adapter for my wife’s Nikon D5100 and started to take some really cool pictures of the moon, venus, and even some quick exposures of deep sky objects. Once I really learned about astrophotography — at least, as much as you can in a few months — I realized this mount is just simply inadequate. Apparently there must be bicycle gears inside because it’s not smooth, at all. The higher the objective is from the horizon, the worse the mount performs. When Sculptor was about 30 deg off the horizon, I was able to get 8-10s exposures. That same night, andromeda was about 70-75 deg when I started, and I couldn’t get more than 4s; not acceptable. That was really the moment I decided to buy a new mount, and also the same time I somewhat regretted my purchase.

In terms of performance for visual astronomy, it seems to be ok enough. I’ve tracked venus for a while and it generally stays close. It does drift considerably over time, which is a natural effect of an motorized system trying to track anything without corrections, so this is expected. It’s easy enough to set the slew speed slow and center the objective and it tracks just fine for a while. Again, there is a direct relationship between tracking performance degradation and the elevation of the object in the sky. I suspect there is a large amount of play in the gear system which causes backlash that is exacerbated when one axis of the mount approaches perpendicular from the earth.

The other part I wish Celestron would’ve improved is the focus knob. I mean, that thing just sucks. It has only one focus mechanism (no fine focus) and is pretty hard to accurately focus, but overally pretty easy to roughly focus. For casual visual observation, it’s not a big deal. For astro, it’s a pain in the royal butt to get focused right. I just got the Bahtinov mask in a couple days ago, so I’m hoping that’ll make things a little easier. I’m not a fan of spending ANOTHER $350 on a fine focuser, so I’m going to create my own remote focus apparatus with a low RPM gearbox motor, belt, some type of attachment to fit over the focus knob, and a metal bracket. I’ve seen some designs online and I think I can get that going pretty quick. Eventually, I’m going to integrate the focus control to an image processing service to auto-focus the scope. Just keep in mind this can be frustrating.

What I didn’t realize when I purchased the scope was how much I enjoyed doing astrophotography. I’m obviously a total newbie, but that type of hobby is right in line with my interests. I’m a very technical person, current engineer on a very cool project integrating instrumentation hardware/software interfaces, so the nexus of electrical engineer and software is my real passion. So, hooking up the scope, mount, camera to the mount, creating an effective workflow to automate the process is super interesting to me — and it’s really just lackluster with the mount. I also didn’t even think AT ALL about buying an APO refractor. In fact, with the amount of money I’ve spent so far, I could’ve easily bought a decent APO and a good EQ mount, and probably a guidescope and camera. But, such is life. Live and learn.

I’ll probably try to recoup a few hundred dollars by selling the Celestron goto mount, if possible. It’s probably great for a casual hobbyist, but I tend to take things to the exteme.

Anyways, I hope this review helps people understand the quality, performance, and limitations of the 8SE GoTo package. I would give the setup a 4/5 stars — because, it does exactly what you’d expect in terms of performance and quality.

Compr este telescopio para subir de nivel desde un 4SE y hay que decir que ste cumple con creces. El 4SE es fabuloso para la iniciacin y es un telescopio muy bien diseado y muy fcil de usar. El 8 comparte estas caractersticas pero va mucho mas all y te permite ver y disfrutar de mucho mas. El 4 te permite ver muchas estrellas (incluyendo bastantes doubles), algunas nebulosas (borrosas), cmulos estelares y es posible ver la galaxia de Andromeda como una mancha, la luna (bastante bien) y algunos planetas (Venus, Marte, Saturno y Jpiter (con las 4 lunas galileas!) pero todo sale mejor con el 8 (si tienes muy buena noche sin contaminacin lumnica y nubes) y ves bastantes objetos imposibles de alcanzar con el 4. Con el 8 los crteres y montaas de la luna, los planetas mas grandes, nebulosas, cmulos, doubles etc. son espectaculares. Todos los Celestron SE disfrutan del sistema GoTo que, despus de alinear el telescopio, te busca prcticamente cualquier objeto visible con este estilo de telescopio. Incluye un Tour (que te ensea los objects mas destacados segn la noche que usas el telescopio), y incluye catlogos importantes para encontrar planetas, objetos Messier, SAO, Caldwell etc. etc.. El Go-To es un programa muy bien conseguido para los menos expertos y muy eficiente para los que saben pero quieren encontrar objetos rpidamente. Para un telescopio de 8 pulgadas es bastante ligero (aunque el 4SE es bastante mas portable). Si compras un Celestron SE te recomiendo el 2 star auto align (el mtodo automtico de 2 estrellas) que es mejor que el mtodo con tres estrellas porque, curiosamente, es menos lioso y mas eficaz (y slo necesitas saber la posicin de una estrella). Como otro cliente coment no es el telescopio mas adecuado para astrofotografa (aunque se puede hacer).

El telescopio merece un 5 pero he quitado una estrella porque el pedido del primero fue un fiasco (se cancel, luego no, luego hubo problemas con el transporte y luego fue defectuoso). Pero hay que decir que Amazon actu bien y me devolvieron el dinero. Mas tarde ped otro y, despus de solucionar un problema con el buscador (de nuevo Amazon lo solucion sin problemas), recib uno que funciona muy bien. Otra razn para comprarlo con Amazon fue el precio inmejorable.

Extras que, en mi opinin, son recomendables (que mejoran la experiencia de la observacin):

Celestron 820975 – Base antivibracin para telescopios y trpodes – el 8 es grande y vibra fcilmente y estos pads quitan muchas vibraciones (imprescindible).
Tapa/parasol anti condensacin para proteger la lente de la humedad y bloquear algo de al contaminacin lumnica (imprescindible).
No comprar todo un kit de oculares sino que unos filtros (por lo menos uno para la luna), un ocular de 32mm (para ver cmulos con mas campo de visin) y un lente Barlow que aumenta la magnification por 2. Estos con el ocular de 25 que viene con el telescopio te aumentan las posibilidades de este telescopio.
He comprado una fuente de alimentacin Celestron para no tender que cambiar las pilas.
Una funda de transporte y el GPS de Celestron son muy tiles si lo vas a mover con regularidad.
El Celestron StarPointer Pro hace la bsqueda de estrellas para la alineacin mas cmoda (se ajusta mejor y tiene mas campo de visin que proyecta una retcula de doble crculo en lugar del punto rojo del modelo original que se tiende oscurecer la estrella que buscas.

En fin, una maravilla de telescopio

A lovely telescope i at first got the celestron SLT 130 as my first scope and did enjoy it but quickly realised I wanted more

After hearing good things about the 8se and haveing the budget I went for it and do no regret at all ! As other have said getting a better Eyepiece is a good idea and with alot it of people haveing this telescope there’s lots of info and tips to help with it online

When I was a kid in the late 60’s, my folks got me a Tasco telescope, had a lot of fun with it. In 2007 I got a Bushnell reflector telescope as a gift. Both telescopes were the lower end of the quality window but still enjoyed using them.

I finally decided to upgrade for several reasons. Neither telescope would track an object through the night, after about a minute in the eyepiece, the object would be out of view and a readjustment was necessary. Finding anything in the sky was a pain as I had to rely on my knowledge of where to point the telescopes. The Bushnell came with a sort of ‘guide’ to help, and it did, but it was just mainly in the general direction to point the scope. And then the lenses that came with both the telescopes were cheap and hard to focus. These telescopes were very beginner based models.

After looking around on the web, the Celestron telescope was often mentioned in the top 10 or so of quality scopes to purchase for the price, and the Nexstar SE series was getting very good reviews. After much deliberation and a cut in price of over $200 one day, I ordered the Celestron NexStar 8 SE. I also ordered the X-Cel LX 25mm, 9mm, and 5mm eyepieces to go with it, it comes with a lower quality 25mm Plossl lens. I also got an X-Cel 2x Barlow lens and a zoom lens from Celestron, the zoom works okay but is not in the same league as an X-Cel, and a Celestron StarSense Automatic Alignment device to help in locating celestial bodies. Also got the AC Adapter as the reviewers everywhere said don’t rely on the 8 AA batteries to run the device as they die quickly.

Of course the day it arrived it was cloudy for three nights, which gave me a chance to really review and read the instructions. It was delivered safely and fast, the telescope was in a box, in another box, and then another box in foam, so no problems there. If I had any issues, it was with the assembly instructions, they never actually show you how to put the orange tube on the fork, which IMO was the most important part. After looking at the pictures in the manual and checking Youtube vids, I was able to figure it out (I had it on upside down and backwards). Otherwise no problems.

Once I had a clear sky I took it outside at dusk and set it up, just lined up the index points and aimed the scope at the horizon, leveled it by eye and took off. I did use the StarSense Auto Alignment unit to calculate the position and within about 7 minutes was enjoying the sights of Jupiter and the Moon like I had never seen them before. Saturn is still below the horizon, but I can imagine it will be a sight to see also. The telescope is definitely worth it, the X-Cel lenses are a must, so clear and great views and focus ability. The zoom lens was actually used the most as I could capture an object in the sky and then zoom in and out easily, and the zoom lens has a rubber eyepiece so you can still wear glasses if you want.

The absolute best part was being able to use the handheld remote and tell it to find something, a star, galaxy, planet and then it slews right to it. The first time it was a little off because of user inexperience, so I doubled down and researched it, actually called Celestron and talked to a live person and then the second time was ready. You do need to keep a few things in mind.

Try to insert the EXACT time into the controller ( I used my iPhone, I just set it for the next minute at 00 seconds, and then wait for the second hand to hit the 12 and then hit enter on the controller, perfect), be sure to set the time correctly, UTC 24 hour time (i.e. 9PM is 2100), make sure you have the correct time zone and daylight savings time set correctly.

Also try to set the correct location as close to where you are setting up, again I used an app on my iPhone to give the correct longitude and latitude coordinates. You have to enter the degrees and not the decimal coordinates, also make sure to get the north/south and east/west location right.

Then you have to align the scope to find out your best calibration, take your time, it is definitely worth it. I used the StarSense Auto Alignment method, so your calibrations may be a different set of instructions. After the final alignment (which took all of about 5 minutes), I told the hand controller to find a star and it slewed right to it, in the absolute center of the eyepiece and then tracked it for as long as I had it on there. Fantastic, it was doing everything it was advertised, I am very happy with this purchase.

It is a heavy telescope, I have to have help to move it safely in and out of the house, you may be able to move it by yourself, or take the tube and fork off the tripod and reassemble in your viewing location.

Only con I can see is the hand controller is a bit hard to see at night, just a little dim, I remedied that with a small flashlight with a red lens to keep down the light pollution, but I found you can control brightness and contrast on the controller so problem solved.

Very glad I finally have an almost pro (IMO) telescope. After I see an object I can tell my wife to look at it and she was amazed at the improvement over the Bushnell scope, and since it tracks the object, no need for a readjustment every 45 seconds…

Great value for the money, great construction, I called Celestron for help and was talking to an expert in two minutes who knew exactly what I was talking about, would recommend this telescope to anyone who wants to experience astronomy.

For the money its a quite good scope. By attaching my 6D I managed to get some amazing shots of the moon, however shooting planets is a little bit out of reach. I just ordered a barlow lens to get the planets a little closer. The goto system is really good and extremely easy and self-explanatory to setup. Easy to carry around. I would recommend this for a first scope easily.

This review is not a criticism of the telescope, hence the 5 star rating in line with other reviewers. I can’t review the product as when delivered as new it was clear it had been opened. All of the internal boxes were unsealed and it looked as though some had been unpacked. So if you order this apparently outstanding telescope check the packing.

The product was a gift and I particualry wanted it to ‘be seen’ to be brand new. On this occasion Amazon let me down but that happens once in a blue moon – pun intended but true nonetheless.