Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsCelestron 6SE, good and bad after month of use. Read before you order.
Reviewed in Canada on August 24, 2022
Disclaimer: I just started my astronomy and astrophotography journey; however, I have pretty good experience with the professional photography gear and particularly with tele lenses used for wildlife shots. Also, I will not make any assumptions about 8SE or any other Celestron produced model but only about my copy of 6SE which I unfortunately ordered from Amazon.
I used 6SE about for a month (when it was clear sky) and it was a total disappointment. I ordered it based on great reviews, and apparently it was a huge mistake and I should definitely try it (where?) before my order.
Anyway, there are my observations based on my current experience (I will update my review later if my opinion is changed).
PROS:
1. It is light, small (for such type of telescope) and very mobile;
2. It is easy to assemble (especially if you are experienced photographer who uses a lot of complex gear);
3. It has some computerized features like auto-align, tracking, etc.;
4. It can be controlled from computer and mobile device using WiFi appliance;
5. It has a lot of accessories and best of them 0.63 focal reducer and Focusing motor;
6. It allows you to enjoy (really!) watching Moon using included 25 mm eyepiece;
7. It has tripod and Az mount;
8. It can work on batteries.
CONS:
1. As it was mentioned by many others, it does not align on anything other than planets in Solar System align mode;
2. It does not properly follow Moon (or Jupiter) after align complete (with proper previous leveling, dumping, location and date specifying, and using external power source). It keeps them somehow in frame but noticeable precession does exist and Moon will still leave frame after few minutes of tracking;
3. It does not track at all on batteries. You can move it with remote or iPhone but after align complete Az motors do nothing;
4. Tripod and mount are supper shaky and without focusing motor get any acceptable focus is just a heroic challenge;
5. LCD on remote is almost impossible to see during alignment process, its quality is worse than ancient Nokia 1030 but this is kind of subjective and still it is possible to use iPhone instead, only in this case there is no way to align it on a planet since only star alignment is available in SkySafari and SkyPortal?!;
6. Finally, last but not least, and might be the most important. It does not deliver (others say it is “blurry”)! And I will try to explain this further.
Because of my photography experience, I started step by step research of the problem (as any other photographer I hate “soft” lenses and not detail images). Of course, I did not expect from 6SE quality of good APO glass but… at least some quality should be present in 1500$ product!
I made a lot of tests and to do that I ordered and borrowed number of eyepieces and used few borrowed cameras. Also, to get some acceptable focus, I ordered focusing motor (which I very like) and focusing mask. After all the tests, I got very interesting outcome.
A. Firstly, when I look at the quality of view, the best quality is with 25/23 mm scope which gives magnification of 60x/65x. Image is crisp, has great contrast and clarity. Moon also is seen in great details (even counting on all atmospheric influence). With an addition of 3x Barlow lens Jupiter looks bright and crisp, its moons are also bright and "pointy". With scopes 10/15mm (150x/100x), image is good with 15mm/100x and somewhere around average / below average at 10mm/150. Moon is still seen well, but stars / moons of Jupiter already pretty "hazy". With scopes 4mm/5mm - image is literally bad, impossible to see anything and focus even on the Moon.
B. Secondly, with 0.63 local reducer and APS-C camera (pixel size 3.88 µm) view of Moon is good (75+% of good frames), and despite of atmospheric influence it is possible to make long movies (1000+ frames) and stack images with great result. Using NexImage 10 (pixel size 1.67µm) even with focal reducer, quality of Moon is below average and long stack (5000+ frames) does not give any good results. With any focusing effort, AutoStakkert! shows less than 30-35% of frames over 50% quality! Also, there is impossible to see Jupiter moons even cracking up gain and exposure, and Jupiter itself is very hazy.
C. Finally, the official 6SE specs state Highest Useful Magnification: 354x, and at least for my ordered telescope it is totally false advertisement, because due to the received results it is at best 150x which is not enough for planetary observations (in other words it limits use of 6SE only to watch the Moon but not anything else). Also, it does not work well (you cannot get sharp image) with any camera which has sensor with pixel size less than 3.5-3.8 µm because of low quality of optics.
Counting on all the things I found, I would not recommend to order 6SE and would advise to look for anything else.