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Celestron 22460 StarSense Explorer DX 102AZ Smartphone App-Enabled Refractor Telescope, iPhone/Android Compatible, Silver/Black

£199.995£399.99Clearance
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Once you select an object, the app displays pointing arrows onscreen. These indicate the direction in which you should move the telescope to find the object. Move the telescope as directed until the bullseye appears centered on the selected object onscreen. When the bullseye changes its color to green, the object is visible in the telescope’s lower powered eyepiece.

With a large 10" Newtonian reflector optical tube, this telescope has enough light grasp to bring out impressive detail in celestial objects while remaining remarkably portable. You can expect sharp, bright views of Jupiter's four Galilean moons, its cloud bands and Great Red Spot, the rings of Saturn, the gaseous glow of the Orion Nebula, dust lanes in the Lagoon Nebula, and our neighbour galaxy, Andromeda. Compared to the StarSense Explorer DX 130 AZ, the 10" Dobsonian has 380+% more light gathering area, providing better views of faint objects. The Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ is supplied with two eyepieces, but would benefit from accessories — such as a Barlow lens — to achieve high-powered, detailed views of the planets. (Image credit: Celestron) If the 130AZ is out of reach, the DX 102AZ is an excellent substitute. It boasts all the same specifications however with a 102mm refractor optical design instead. This telescope with the StarSense Explorer app is a fantastic choice for those looking to view the Moon and Planets. Optically the telescope is well up to standard for a short-focus achromatic refractor and is well-suited to deep-sky observing. The eyepieces supplied, although in lightweight plastic barrels, are of good optical quality. Boosting the magnification using a Celestron 2x Barlow lens revealed false color in lunar and planetary images, so this is not an ideal high-power or planetary instrument. The erect-image diagonal (which is necessary to allow the instrument to focus) introduces very little distortion, only marginally noticeable on a star image using a magnification of 130x. Should you buy the Celestron StarSense DX 102AZ? We moved to a variety of different objects from galaxies to nebulas, all of which were located without a problem with the StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ and always within the low power field of view.Celestron has reinvented the Dobsonian telescope with StarSense Explorer—the first Dobsonian that uses your smartphone to analyze the night sky and calculate its position in real-time. This large-aperture Celestron StarSense Explorer is ideal for serious beginners, thanks to the app's user-friendly interface and detailed tutorials. It's like having your own personal tour guide of the night sky. The large aperture will ensure that you won’t outgrow the telescope as you continue on in your astronomical adventures. The user-friendly planetarium interface allows you to scan the skies for objects you wish to view. You can also search for objects in the extensive database. If you are unsure how to align the camera, tap the Menu icon button and turn on the Camera Setup Assistant. Now, when you go through the camera alignment screens, there will be information and videos to walk you through the process. The Celestron StarSense Explorer 8-inch Dobsonian telescope is a hugely impressive telescope. Although we're sure beginners could get used to it, it's primarily aimed at intermediate users after a good quality, good value Dobsonian telescope and who have the confidence to manually aim it. As such it's a great telescope for learning the night sky, too. However, it's not lightweight. Although there are some excellent handles to carry the tube and the base separately — and it's easy enough to swivel and pivot once in place — a telescope this size requires some careful consideration. However, if you have the space it comes highly recommended and should give you many years of incredible deep sky views. If the Celestron StarSense Explorer 8-inch Dobsonian telescope isn't for you

Finally, there is a standard red-dot finder to help in pointing the telescope at objects. This is necessary when aligning the telescope, as you need to point it at a recognizable object at the start of observing. Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 102AZ review: First light and functionality StarSense Explorer uses image data captured by the smartphone’s camera to determine its pointing position. The app captures an image of the night sky and then matches the star patterns within the image to its internal database in a process like fingerprint matching or facial recognition. While other astronomy apps may claim that they can help you find objects, they rely exclusively on the phone’s gyros and accelerometers, which aren’t as accurate as LISA technology. No other app can accurately tell you when your target is visible in the eyepiece. StarSense Explorer LT’s simple altazimuth mount makes it easy to move the telescope to find your target. An altitude slow motion adjustment with a sliding rod helps you fine tune the telescope’s pointing position and follow targets as they appear to drift across the night sky. It’s all anchored by an adjustable, full-height tripod. Damian A. Peach FRAS is a British amateur astronomer, astrophotographer, lecturer and author. Best known for his photographs of a wide variety of astronomical objects. His career in the field spans over thirty years.If you decide to forgo using the app, the supplied red-dot finder proved to be useful for star-hopping. (Image credit: Celestron) Celestron has reinvented the manual telescope with StarSense Explorer—the first telescope that uses your smartphone to analyze the night sky and calculate its position in real time. StarSense Explorer is ideal for beginners thanks to the app’s user-friendly interface and detailed tutorials. It’s like having your own personal tour It should be noted that it's best to align the finder during the day and on terrestrial objects to save fiddling around in the dark. Even as a simple manual telescope, the Explorer DX 130AZ works nicely. Of course, then you have to locate objects "the hard way" but the motions in moving the telescope are smooth and the slow-motion controls work smoothly enough for centering and keeping objects within the field of view. Select all the files shown in the “StarSense Explorer” folder and copy them to a folder on your computer.

Buy the LT 80AZ telescope as a great starter kit. Let the telescope find objects for you based on their position in real-time. This 80mm aperture telescope comes complete with two eyepieces providing up to 90x magnification, which can always be increased with a Barlow lens or further eyepieces.

Celestron StarSense Explorer 10 Inch Dobsonian

A typical system able to plate solve would require several pieces or expensive equipment, such as a sensitive imaging camera, camera lens, external computer, and specialized astronomical software. Using a smartphone to independently do astronomical plate solving is a significant step forward in the progression of amateur astronomy and astronomy apps. StarSense Explorer technology transforms your smartphone into the perfect telescope observing assistant. In doing so, it allows StarSense Explorer telescopes to provide an upgraded astronomical observing experience without the cost associated with more expensive computerized systems. Although I had no problems while using the Celestron StarSense Explorer 8-inch Dobsonian there are few things to think about that aren’t obvious from the get-go. The first is that while this is as automatic a process as possible, the user does still have to align this telescope with a bright star. This is merely to allow the software to know that what it sees in the centre of the mirror behind the smartphone is aligned with what’s in the centre of the eyepiece. All you need is a clear sky in a deep twilight, an obvious bright star – any one will do – and the confidence to use the red dot finder to achieve a rough alignment. Then you need to get it in the centre of the eyepiece’s field of view. It’s not difficult, but beginners may initially struggle with the first step. With a large 10" Newtonian reflector optical tube, this telescope has enough light-gathering ability to bring out impressive detail in celestial objects while remaining remarkably portable. You can expect sharp, bright views of Jupiter's four Galilean moons, its cloud bands and Great Red Spot, the rings of Saturn, the gaseous glow of the Orion Nebula, dust lanes in the Lagoon Nebula, and our neighbor galaxy, Andromeda. Compared to the StarSense Explorer DX 130 AZ, the 10" Dobsonian has 380+% more light gathering area, providing better views of faint objects.

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