Celestron - NexStar 5SE Telescope
$739.99
$899.95
18% off
Reference Price
Condition: New
Model: Nexstar 5SE Telescope
Top positive review
152 people found this helpful
Great telescope for beginners
By Judy Sit on Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2019
Great telescope for a full year now. I brought the 5'' because it fits my budget and is much more portable than the 6" & 8". The telescope arrived in two boxes and was packaged well. It was quite easy to assemble and was straightforward. But the first night when I tested it the red dot finder failed and would not turn on. I contacted product support and they refunded the price of the red dot finder to let me buy another. I think this is reasonable. The telescope was of good quality and was fairly portable in two pieces. I also brought it with the Nex-yz adapter and eyepiece kit. In my opinion, I would not buy the phone adapter and eyepiece kit because I don't use the adapter and eyepiece often. You will pretty much only use the moon filter, 13, 17, and 32mm eyepieces. I also brought a generic LPR filter which helps somewhat in revealing dim objects and filtering out the light pollution . The goto function was really helpful in finding objects especially DSO's. I will use the auto 2 star alignment procedure and manual location settings. This scope was fine for starting astrophotography but exposures can only be limited to 30 seconds maximum. Even though there was a polar alignment option, it was really hard to do since I am living quite close to the equator in Hong Kong and the mount twists into a really weird position when tracking. In the first few months I viewed only from the city, which was a bortle 9 scale. The planets are easy to see, you can see the belts of Jupiter and its moons, and the rings of Saturn easily. If you want a telescope for ONLY the planets, I would recommend some of the scopes without go to like a dobsonian or maktusov because you will be able to see more detail with increased aperture. You don't need go-to because planets are really bright and sometimes the mount will go off track. The Orion Nebula can be seen though only the bright parts. The andromeda galaxy can NOT be seen at all in light polluted places. Later I was able to go out to a better spot ( bortle 5 ) and it was excellent, and I was able to see the double cluster, Orion Nebula and andromeda galaxy a lot better. I would recommend this scope to beginners and people starting astronomy. You can get good results in the middle of the city, but driving to a deep sky site really makes the view impressive. I will not recommend this for astrophotography but instead will recommend scopes with German equatorial mounts. * images are taken with A6000 camera with remote control.
Top critical review
41 people found this helpful
Defective telescope out of the box. 2nd Celestron with missing parts advertised as included
By AmazonAddict on Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2019
I originally purchased a Celestron LCM80 for a family Christmas gift at a hobby shop about an hour from where we live. We got it out of the box and it was missing the software download and the finderscope. It was disappointing seeing how our kids went from being excited over their new Christmas gift to being sad that it didnt work. I took it back to the hobby shop and got my money back as they didn't have a replacement and we didn't want to wait on getting the parts from Celestron. I went to order a replacement on Amazon and the price we paid at the hobby shop was slightly less than the Nexstar 4Se offered by Amazon. I did some research and the Nexstar 4Se seemed to be a better telescope than the LCM80 and it also included the rs232 cable to connect to our laptop for additional control. This really sweetened the deal since the LCM80 did not include a rs232 computer cable. We just had to purchase a rs232 to USB converter cable for $15. About a week later we were excited to get our new NexStar 4SE. We got it out of the box and inventoried the parts. We got the finderscope and software download this time but there was no rs232 cable. The getting started manual showed the rs232 cable should be included. I contacted Celestron and they said the new on-board computer doesn't require an rs232 but does require a straight through USB cable so they quit including them. So now we are short of a computer communications cable and we purchased a USB converter cable for the rs232 that is now useless. After looking at some other amazon reviews for this product it is apparent Amazon knows this cable is not included yet they still advertise that it is included. This is deceptive and they should change the description of the included items. We got the scope mounted on the base and went to align the finderscope with the telescope and couldn't see any light being reflected into the eyepiece. We followed the quick start guide and rotated the flip mirror control and still no light coming into the eye piece. I looked inside the OTA and was unable to see a mirror. I contacted Celestron and was told that this is very rare but the mirror is only held in place by a piece of double sided tape and something might have damaged it during the manufacturing process. It doesn't sound like the mirror is loose in the OTA but instead may have never got installed (there is no visible tape residue on the plastic piece that supports the mirror) at the factory. They suggested I send it back to Amazon as it was clearly defective. After reviewing other Amazon posts for this telescope it looks like this problem might be a frequent occurrence. I am sending this one back and am hoping we get a working telescope that includes all the parts listed on Amazon's site. I will post an update after getting a working unit.
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