The orange tube Celestron SCT has been in production since 1970, and for good reason. It’s an 8-inch Schmidt Cassegrain telescope with a focal length of 2032mm at F/10. It feels a little “toy-ish”, but the 8″ NexStar OTA reminds us that this is a serious telescope. The motorized mount head is where the cost savings come into play. Users of this Celestron NexStar 8SE mentioned that a dual-arm fork design (like the one on the CPC series telescopes) would help the OTA feel a lot more secure. The Celestron NexStar remote seats neatly inside of the arm, which is a clever space-saving design. The mount head unit and fork arm have a plastic outer casing, reminding you that this is a budget-friendly GoTo telescope package. It has a nice design and it feels secure. The mount head connects securely using 3 threaded bolts. The trade-off of a heavier more stable tripod probably isn’t worth the extra weight. It seems stable enough for a mount and scope of this size, and it keeps weight down for travel. The tripod I would call “medium-duty”, it’s similar to the one that comes in the newest Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer GTI package. Right out of the gate, I noticed a few things. I used an AC adapter to plug the mount into household power in the backyard, but this mount can also be powered via 8 x AA batteries for complete mobility.Īlthough the red dot finderscope is simple and inexpensive, it is surprisingly effective at confirming the pointing direction of this high magnification telescope. Once assembled, the entire kit is light enough to be carried around the yard if necessary. Setting up the Celestron NexStar 8SE for the first time was a quick and painless experience. NexStar SE Mount: Motorized Alt-Azimuth/ GoTo.Camera/Eyepiece Connection: 1.25″ Nosepiece.The NexStar 8SE is great for spur-of-the-moment observing sessions of the moon or planets. I can see why beginners are drawn to this package as their first serious scope. If you look at the specifications for this telescope, it highlights some pretty impressive potential for a variety of visual observations. This 8″ SCT was meant for crisp views of solar system objects, and that is where it excels. If you’re into photographing planets the Celestron NexStar 8SE will work out just fine. (An equatorial telescope mount is best).īut, people have taken impressive images with this telescope, it just requires a different approach. Some people even mentioned that had sold the scope, and wished that they had kept it.Īs an astrophotographer, the first thing I noticed was the Alt-Az fork mount, and that’s not what you want if your primary interest is long-exposure astrophotography. There are a few quirks of course (the red dot finder scope is rudimentary, and the single-arm fork mount is a little wobbly), but overall everyone seemed to agree that it was a smart purchase and they got a lot of use out of it. The planet Jupiter captured using the Celestron NexStar 8SE (Christian Ralph). Here is a spectacular photo of the planet Jupiter, captured by Christian Ralph using his Celestron NexStar 8SE telescope. From seeing their first-ever view of the planet Saturn to surprisingly impressive astrophotography, the NexStar 8SE is a widely appreciated piece of kit. I asked the AstroBackyard community on Facebook how they felt, and almost all of them had amazing things to say about this telescope.
The telescope OTA (optical tube assembly) is top-notch, while the mount is just enough to get you by.
Is this the all-in-one telescope package that does it all? Not quite, but that’s okay. If you’re in the market for a grab-and-go telescope (that excels in views of the moon and planets), I think you will enjoy my review of the Celestron NexStar 8SE. In this post, I’ll show my results using Celestron’s NexYZ smartphone adapter. This is a primarily visual telescope, meant for enjoying views of the moon, planets, and the brighter nebulae and galaxies through the eyepiece.īut what about astrophotography? The design of the tracking telescope mount (fork-mounted Alt-Az) wasn’t designed for it, but is it a complete waste of time?
I was impressed with the completeness of this package, from the 1.25″ 25mm eyepiece and diagonal, to the red dot finder mounted to the 8-inch OTA. The NexStar series of SCTs have been around for over a decade, and I was finally able to experience this beginner-friendly telescope for myself. It features a large aperture optical telescope and a computerized GoTo mount. The Celestron NexStar 8SE computerized telescope is one of the best-selling telescope packages of all time.
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