Celestron NexStar 8SE Review

hey check this out celestron next are 8se I've owned this for two years and I'd like to share some of my thoughts about it now I grew up watching Carl Sagan cosmos and I got so inspired I joined the astronomy club in seventh grade and I can't forget seeing Saturn for the first time in a amateur telescope now I've never owned a telescope but after watching cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson in 2014 it inspired me to look at buying this toy granted this toy will enrich your life if you're one to appreciate it a telescope is not for everyone in fact it's not for most people even my wife who does appreciate looking at the night sky for the first time looking at Andromeda galaxy said oh I think I see a smudge so obviously you're not going to see the same quality images as the Hubble telescope but my objective is to see the objects for themselves and to know that the photons from Andromeda galaxy traveled two and a half million years through the universe from one galaxy to another through this telescope through the eyepiece to my own eyeball simply amazing let's be honest you can't use a telescope that often obviously you can't use it during the day I mean you could look at the mountains and all but you're not looking at the night sky you can't use it if you don't want to stay up late or get up super early you can't use it if the skies are cloudy which happens quite often as I found out you can't use it if you're blocked by trees you can't use it if you're busy at work and don't have the time and energy to set everything up now even when you want to use it in the skies are clear and you take everything outside perhaps the moon is full and it's like a streetlight blocking out a lot of the deep sky objects so realistically 99% of the time your telescope is going be in storage if you want to telescope perhaps start with binoculars there's a lot you can see Orion Nebula simply fantastic same with Andromeda galaxies in the Pleiades clusters even better with binoculars than a telescope because you get the wider field of view now if you do decide to buy a telescope that is an expensive decision altogether I probably spent $1,700 on this setup I spent 1200 on the scope and about $500 on accessories most of which I spent on amazon.com I looked at other manufacturers Meade and Orion you know it's hard to go wrong with any of them but I simply like the celestron now I looked at other styles of telescope and the Dobsonian is a really good bang for the buck but it's kind of bulky and I do bring the telescope camping so I wanted something that was a little more compact than a Dobsonian setup now in terms of aperture this scope you can buy in a four five six or eight inch aperture now the 8 inch obviously let's in more light it's a big light bucket and that's what I was looking for I was looking for maximum quality view and still having some portability now the 8 inch is more bulky and more difficult to find a case than compared to the smaller scopes any of the smaller 4 or 5 or 6 inch scopes fit in a Pelican case or celestron made cases much easier than this scope I ended up using something I've made bought at Home Depot for storage right now but I use the cardboard boxes for about a year and they're still holding up and I imagine there are many people who have the 8 se who used the cardboard boxes for storage so before we get into setting up the telescope I want to talk about accessories so power is one of the most important things with this telescope you cannot point it at anything without having power it's one of the things that the lucien 8 has added that you can manually slough the telescope without having power now I do put batteries in this it's eight double-a batteries and it goes through them very quickly so you really have to have power attached to the external port so you have a couple different options here when I'm camping one of the most easy things to do is to get the 12 volt adapter and probably a 12 volt extension cord as well and I just run it from my cigarette lighter to the telescope works great it works way better than the double-a batteries in the telescope now after using this a while and taking a camping I decided to get the Yeti 400 this is a great power device I charge it via solar when we're camping and it runs this telescope all week long one more out in the Utah desert mom what about this telescope I did buy the celestron lens kit it comes with a bunch of different lenses a bunch of different filters and I really don't use this I would not recommend buying it in fact the only two things I use out of the celestron lens kit is the neutral density filter when I'm looking at the moon and the 32 millimeter wide angle lens which is helpful when you're just kind of getting a wide view of the sky so all the close-up lenses I prefer to use the Bader zoom this is about three hundred dollars but it's worth it so it's double the cost of this but then you I'm so used to with photography I could zoom in and out and that's what this lens gives me is the ability to start wide find what I'm looking at and then zoom in is simply more convenient than changing a bunch of lenses that are included in the celestron kit now the finder that comes with the telescope will get the job done but this tell rad finder for $40.00 is worth every penny the batteries last forever it's got a much wider view of the I and I just find it great it sticks on with double-stick tape it's very easy to remove I do take it off when I'm storing the scope but the tail read finders must-have accessory now the GPS unit that I've added is a nice feature it allows you to save a lot of time entering the time and location so that for a hundred and eighty dollars is kind of pricey but I do recommend it now on the other hand the Wi-Fi unit this cost $90 and this plugs in to the GPS unit that then plugs into the base station this Wi-Fi does work but I don't like it I would not I would not buy this again now the evolution 8 includes Wi-Fi and I'm not sure if they improved it but quite frankly once you learn the night sky and have a good plan it's almost easier to use the keypad just type in Messier 31 if you like now before you take your telescope outside you need to have a plan it's best to sit down and open up some software and try to take a look at what's going to be visible that evening especially in the area of the sky that you have clear it's also a good idea to know your constellations and also know how they point to other objects in the sky such as a Big Dipper pointing the Polaris or arcing to Arcturus know that Cassiopeia and Pegasus both point to the Andromeda galaxy and the Hercules cluster is obviously in the Hercules constellation Orion Nebula is easily found in the sword of the Orion constellation there is a sky tour feature in the celestron 8se but I find that it jumps all around the sky and I'd rather have the telescope go in small increments as I'm looking at items in the sky now I do like to write it down sit down before it's dark and make a list so for alignment I use the two star Auto align now with the GPS entry it makes it very easy I don't have to enter the time and location every single time it does take a couple minutes for it to lock on to the GPS but I do recommend this accessory so what I typically do is I start with Polaris I have a clear view of the North Star so I point the telescope scope to Polaris and then it automatically will pick another bright star or give me a list so if I'm looking on sky Safari first before I go outside I know what other bright stars are going to be visible at that time pick two stars and it does do a pretty good alignment now when I'm viewing I start with wider eyepiece 32 millimeters great or the widest setting 24 on this Bader eyepiece is a good starting point I will try to go to the object on my list I've written it down on a piece of paper and I'll just type to type it into menu go to that object if you're tracking something I've done this mistake myself I was tracking an object and then I went to sleep thinking I would wake up early in the morning and take another look but I never did and as it was turning and tracking the cluster that I was tracking the power Jack cord was bent basically it's got decently strong motors so you do want to turn off the scope when it's not attended you're ideally want to bring it in at night after you've done your observing so what are my favorites I really do enjoy studying some of the planets of course it depends on what time of year and your location what you can see but Saturn Jupiter of course are some of my favorite seeing the moons of Jupiter is simply amazing Venus you can see the phases other favorites of mine include the Orion Nebula the Hercules cluster the Rose cluster this Swan nebula and of course the Andromeda galaxy m31 observing the night sky with the celestron next r8s II has truly enriched my life but any telescope could do that not necessarily this one it's kind of like seeing art in a museum it's temporary very fleeting experience if you do decide by a telescope the celestron next r8 se or any other telescope I do wish you success in clear skies thank you for watching if you found this helpful please give me a thumbs up

Channel: Rob Lee

Views: 308,447

Rating: 4.9432383 out of 5

Keywords: Celestron, Telescope, Nexstar, 8 SE, 8SE, review, 2-year, eyepiece, baeder, zoom, dobsonian, schmidt, cassegrain, scope, 6se, 5se, 4se, meade, orion, goto, evolution, astronomy, celestron review, telescope review, technology, space, deep sky, nebula, galaxy, yet 400, yeti power, solar telescope

Id: xcvk1svA5yo

Length: 11min 44sec (704 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 18 2016