Celestron Starsense Explorer 8 Inch Dobsonian App-Enabled Dobsonian Telescope

Most astronomers will recommend you start with a 6" or 8" dobsonian. I've had refractors before, but this is my first reflector. I cannot stress enough how enjoyable this scope is to use and view the heavens with. It comes with a decent Omni Plossl in 25mm focal length. I recommend purchasing two additional eyepieces, an 8-12mm, and a 36-40mm. I have a 12mm, a 40mm, and 2x barlow in Omni Plossl fashion to match the 25mm. There are a wide variety of magnifications with these 3 eyepieces and the barlow, for not a lot of money. From 30x, to 200x, I can view a wide range of objects including planets, moon, sun (with a proper filter) and several deep space objects with an apparent magnitude of 10 or lower, quite clearly. Objects higher than 10 will be difficult if you live with city light pollution, but that still leaves thousands of viewable objects. It's not too heavy when carried in two pieces (roughly 25lbs/11kg for the tube, and the mount, each). The starsense app works very well, and on clear dark nights, it is very accurate. With a full moon or cloudy skies, it can be a bit tricky. I highly recommend this scope to anyone that wants a well built telescope, with a helping hand finding objects. It includes a red dot finder if you want to find objects the old fashioned way as well. But for someone like me with astigmatism and poor night vision, the starsense is extremely handy and convenient. Seeing the 8" mirror in the bottom of the tube is a sight to see, I'll include pictures of the scope, as well as several photos I have taken of the moon and some planets. Yes, you can actually do minor planetary and lunar imaging with this scope, even with your phone! In fact, every photo I've included in this review was taken with my Samsung S23, the Nexyz phone mount, and the various eyepieces I mentioned earlier. Take a few videos of the object, turn the videos into an .ser file with PIPP (free software) and stack the frames in Autostakkert (also free) to reveal a stacked image ready for sharpening and color enhancement. I hope this review will help people decide if this scope was right for them, because it was certainly right for me!

This telescope exceeded my expectation. I'm new to the hobby. My fist telescope was a Meade LX-90 8" SCT goto telescope. Its awesome but it takes me 30 to 45 min to set up level the tripod home position the telescope etc. The Celestron 8" dobsonian was a breeze to set up. The starsense software worked great and it was pretty easy first time set up. The starsense software is pretty accurate but as my viewing evening progressed it got further off. I'm sure with experience I will be better able to use this software. Its great for beginners like me who don't know the night sky. It gives you "tonight's best" objects that can be found and viewed easily. I see such bad reviews on the 25mm lens included with the telescope. I have a top of the line 31mm Nagler. The 25mm Celestron plossl to me looked every bit as good as my 31mm Nagler! Stars could be focused to pinpoints and the clould layers of Jupiter easily seen equally as well with both lenses to me as a beginner. No the Plossl didn't have the 82 mm field of view as the Nagler but still impressive to me. The 8" dobsonian has 1200 mm focal length and was not so sensitive to vibration compared to the 2300 mm focal length of my 8" Meade LX-90. Manually I could easily point to stuff and keep it centered much better than I expected. I could also move my new Dobsonian Telescope and the the starsense software compensated and didn't have to be recalibrated unlike the LX-90. You will not be disappointed if you buy this telescope.

I bought this last October and have used it multiple times looking at the moon, a few planets, and I even saw a nebula. I'm a bit of a klutz and I know very little about the stars but I'm learning with this scope. The moon is very bright in the scope because of its high magnification so for viewing the moon you do need a good moon filter. At higher powers it is difficult to keep an object within view but it just takes practice with making very minor adjustments. Aligning the spotting scope with the main scope is quite easy. Collimation of the mirror is also easy with the provided instructions. I've experimented with the StarSense app and my first phone was a cheap one and I was not able to get it to figure out where it is to start using it. I got a new phone and I've been able to align it and I've started using it but have not had a lot of opportunities to do so because of poor weather. I would recommend getting additional eyepieces and filters to go with the scope as they can enhance your ability to view various objects. A strong moon filter is critical to view the moon without blinding yourself with moonlight. I just bought an adjustable moon filter because you can adjust it to filter out quite a bit of light. Now I want a solar filter. I gave the scope 5 stars for portability even though it is a really big and fairly heavy but I knew that when buying it and expected the size and bulk.

$1000 for something made with particle board. Not even real wood.

Got this as a gift we built it set up the app and attachments on it and saw the moons surface, jupiter and saturn the same night didnt need to collimate but i recommend checking it atleast and a sturdy surface for it so your view thru the eyepiece doesnt jiggle got different eyepieces for it aswell by the same company amazing piece of equipment its like a microscope except you see bigger stuff instead of smaller stuff.