Celestron NexStar 8SE Computerized Telescope Bundle with Eyepiece Kit, WiFi Module, and Accessories

Best money can buy.

I purchased this for my Fiancé. She loves astronomy and has never had a telescope. I took the plunge and figured this would be a good investment for her happiness. She is amazed every single time she looks through this scope. It really is amazing! I almost cried seeing planets so close. And, I’m not into it like she is.The one downfall is the batteries. Just purchase the AC converter. Why it doesn’t just come with one makes me roll my eyes at the price. Anyway, amazing purchase!!

Came beautiful wrapped. No damages. So excited to get started with it.

I got my first telescope - a 2.4" Tasco - when I was thirteen years old (late 1960s) and it stayed with me through college. Life and work got in the way so it stayed in its case until the early 1990s when I upgraded to a 10" Meade Cassegrain with equatorial mount. Got the full package and managed to place some photographs with magazines (back in the days of print). I share this up front so you'll know I've been around and used scopes for quite a while.I received a Celestron NexStar 8se package with 14 piece accessory kit and SkyPortal Wifi Adapter for Christmas less than a month ago, and the only way to do this review justice is to provide a play by play.Day 1:It arrives.I'm not sure why delivery drivers leave 2oz packages by the garage door and place packages you need a derrick to lift blocking the front door so you can't get out to get the package. The 8se comes in a BIG, HEAVY box (SENIORS PAY ATTENTION!).Unpacking.Open the outer box, open the inner box, and you're presented with four more boxes, some of which have even smaller boxes inside. There are instructions (not completely useless, not really helpful) which provide clues regarding which box to open first. If you love mysteries, you're going to love this.Quick Set-up GuideFirst, have the Instruction Manual handy and refer to it often. If nothing else, the pictures in the Quick Set-up Guide and Instruction Manual provide clues as to how things are suppose to work. When in doubt with the Set-up Guide, check with the Instruction Manual and vice-versa. Neither tells the complete story and each have different errors.Steps 1-5 GoodStep 6 - First thing, our tripod didn't have a bubble. Looked and looked and looked and no bubble, no bubble, no bubble. Finally used the one from the Meade.Second, The tripod bubble level's only useful if you never plan on moving the telescope-tripod assembly from wherever you do your initial assembly. Move it outside, front yard to backyard, beach to desert, field to forest, and you need to take the mounting platform off the tripod to level it all over again.Note this: If you take off the mounting platform, the telescope comes with it unless you separate the scope from the mounting platform.Steps 14-15 - Yes, we're skipping. Steps 14-15 is where you put eight AA batteries in the mounting platform. Videos indicate this is easy. (SENIORS PAY ATTENTION) It isn't. You'll need strong fingers, strong nails, or a screwdriver to pop it off. Put these batteries in now because you'll have to work under or around the telescope if you wait until Steps 14-15 is suppose to occur.Further note - a fresh pack of batteries gives good use for ~30m then fades rapidly, especially if you're using the scope in winter (15-30ºF). We planned on getting the rechargeable power supply and ended up returning the entire unit and all accessories because, personally, I don't need the headaches.Step 7 - Notice in the picture the demonstrator's holding the scope and mounting platform together? The hitch here is they didn't include the step where you attach the scope to the mounting platform.The hitch with that missing step is you can't attach the scope to the mounting platform as the platform is configured coming out of the boxThe hitch there is you need to turn the mounting platform part that the scope slides into so you can slide the scope into it.The hitch there is it doesn't turn easy and, if you're like me, you're leery of turning something with a relatively precision motor attached. We called tech support. Turns out the mounting platform part is on a friction clutch and can be turned by hand. Really? (SENIORS PAY ATTENTION) This doesn't turn easy for people with a good grip, and next to impossibly if you have arthritis.Not to mention turning a precision gearing mechanism with a friction clutch by hand. Nobody told the engineers that's a perfect way to ruin the clutch assembly?Steps 8-13 - GoodSteps 16-18 - Only useful if you plan on terrestrial viewing or know astrogation well enough to "point-and-shoot."Now we get to "Before you can begin observing, you must setup your hand control, align your finderscope and align your telescope. Step by step instructions are included in the following Hand Control Setup section."I'd already spent 2+ hours going through the various documentation (the Instruction Manual is a must), so figuring out the Hand Control Guide is the next day's job.Day 2:Aligning the finderscope and telescope. Before anything else, remember you have to mount the finderscope to the telescope to align them. Does anybody writing documentation know how to explain something step by step and explicitly? Remember those college science texts which showed step 1 and 2 then the solution and in between had "The derivation is left as an exercise for the student"? They may as well have had "And then a miracle happened!"Anyway, the people who wrote "The derivation is left as an exercise" also wrote the Celestron documentation.Got the finderscope attached. Now I had to find something ~1/4 mile away to properly align the finderscope to the telescope. Which meant taking the telescope, the mount, and tripod somewhere where I could clearly see a steady, non-moving terrestrial object which was ~1/4 mile away. Do you live in a suburban neighborhood? I ended up using a neighbor's window casing two streets away.Fair enough, but your suppose to get your target in the center of the finderscope which has no crosshairs so you have to be looking through the finderscope dead on while you make adjustments. (SENIORS TAKE NOTE) This can be straining if you have back problems and are 6' tall or more as you have to bend over to see dead on, and the moment to touch the adjustments the entire assembly jiggles so you have to wait for it to quell before making your next adjustment.Once you've got it in the finderscope, move on to the main scope, again with the "center," which again means you have to be viewing dead on.Yeah, I wasn't having fun yet.Hand Control Guide:First, does it work? Yes.Second, could it work better? Definitely.Third, does it work as simply and as easily as the documentation and videos indicate? No way, period!The menu system is extensive. It's also ONE LINE at a time on a horizontally scrolling LED display. Really? In 2025? Okay, chock this up to not getting the flying car I was promised, too.I had to work through the menus four times before I worked it properly. Now onto finding a bright sky object, center it in your finderscope, center it in your main scope, press this, press that, lather-rinse-repeat three times.The first night out I went through that menu system and found three objects three times over and each time got an alignment failed message.Okay, enough for one night. Bring everything inside and start again tomorrow.Day 3:I downloaded two pieces of software available from Celestron, CPWI and Starry Night. I installed and uninstalled Starry Night five or so times. Each time, despite reporting a successful install, Starry Night threw errors faster than I could dismiss them during loading.CPWI installed and loaded, and that leads us to the SkyPortal WiFi adapter module. It worked fine in "direct" mode, meaning it connected to the laptop and I could communicate with the telescope provided laptop and 'scope where within 5-15' of each other. However, it never worked with in wifi network mode, meaning I couldn't sit in my backroom, indicate what I wanted to view, and have that info sent to the 'scope in my driveway about 30' away even though the distance from each point to the router was less than 15'.The CPWI software lets you align your scope.Okay, and mine didn't. It couldn't find anything it suggested as an alignment point. The suggested points where in the sky, simply not where the CPWI software indicated they should be.The Hand Control alignment needs to be repeated each time you set up the scope. Say what? I have to go through a 15-20m procedure each time I want to look at something? The CPWI lets you save an alignment setting. Trouble there is it never aligned my 'scope properly.Days 3-15:I took the 'scope out nightly for about two weeks and repeatedly failed. I contacted Celestron for guidance and was on hold long enough for the sun to go nova. I emailed with my concerns. They sent me pages from the manuals.Day 16:I packed up the 'scope and returned it.By the way, during the repacking process I found the bubble level. About the size of a dime, and stuck in some bubble wrap.

This was so hard to use and was really hard to get focused, so I would not give high praise on functionality. Would say image quality was good when we could make it work. Build quality was also good and the value for the money would have been good if it worked as we had hoped. Fit was good for any age.