( 4 reviews )
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Posted: May 12 2009
I'm not an astronomy major, neither an expert in optics. Got it for my 10-year old son. I suspected this might be a good product, but couldn't even imagine how great it is, considering all bells and whistles. Now both my son and my husband are hooked. So far their only complains were about weather and seasons. It's too cold outside when its dark in winter and it takes too long to wait for the night time in summer :)
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Posted: Jul 6 2008
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.
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( 11 of 11 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jan 20 2008
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.
