Celestron 81055 NexYZ 3-Axis Universal Smartphone Adapter, Patented Design - Works with Telescopes, Spotting Scopes, Binoculars, Monoculars and Microscopes, Black

Any observer with optics, preferably, on a stand will like this. Not cheap, but very well engineered. Robust. And if any axis feels a little slack, or too tight, there are small screws to adjust. Ensure your mount can take the weight of phone. As an astronomer, I found it helpful to attach to an eyepiece in daylight. The Z axis (up and down to the eyepiece), was easier than in the dark. Hope this helps.

Tricky to place on my phone on. One you get it, the phone stays in place. I attached my first picture taken on the phone using this attachment with my telescope.

This is a great device. Yes it is a bit tricky to set up, but one you have it on it does make it very easy to get better pictures than you would just hand holding. Biggest issue is as you move it about to line it up, the iPhone keeps switching lenses, but you can get there. Attached are a couple of pictures. On is lemon cells and the other is grains of salt. The attachment is flexible and fits ok on the Apex, although as a binocular microscope the second eyepiece does make it slightly snug. The plastic adaptor fits well and the phone felt secure. Alignment movement feels pretty good, although a bit rougher than I expected. Overall I think it is well made and good quality..

All the criticisms of previous viewers are correct. I'll add a few other observations. But first - it's not bad. In many ways it's a great idea and has great features. The x,y,z movements are solid; excellent rack and pinion. And it's nice to have the phone supported at the bottom as well as the sides - an uncommon feature and surely a necessity. But this is quite an expensive device, considering that simple mechanical equivalent attachments are £10-15, so I'd expect more, especially from Celestron. There are the following flaws: 1. The eyepiece grip has several flaws. It's designed for device eyepieces which are smooth or flat (cylindrical) in the axial direction. For eyepieces which may have a protruding step part-way along their axis, like my binoculars, this means that the clamp is not fully engaged along the full axial extent of its design contact. Combined with the foam material chosen for the clamp contact surface, this has lead to permanent indentation of the foam material, within a few hours of operation. This means that future use will simply require further pressure to maintain a good grip, leading to further compression of the foam .... Some form of adapter would be nice, especially for the price. The provided split corrugation wasn't a good enough design for my situation. 2. The marketing does not make it explicitly clear that the primary market is for phones with the camera lens in the corner of the smartphone body. This is an issue for e.g. Galaxy Note 9 etc with the phone in the mid-width position, since the z-axis adjustment and the design of the clamp axis can cause interference between the phone and the joint/bracket of the eye-piece mount. Not a major issue, but in conjunction with the axial dimension of the eyepiece grip, the axial dimension of the eyepiece grip joint, this can make getting the axial position of the camera a bit tricky, especially if it needs to be closer to the binocular eyepiece. 3. For binoculars it's very much a right-eyepiece device. If the eyepiece is a bit loose, then under certain orientations, the combined weight of the Nexyz and phone can twist the binocular eyepiece thus adjusting the focus. Bit of a nuisance. 4. The material of the rack and pinions was good enough and the assembly and operation of them were fine. Quite impressed. However, the rest of the structural material is a semi-hard plastic which is actually quite flexible. This means that the assembly is flexible under load (see point 5), and also that the manufactured assembly is not quite correct. It is quite clear from inspection that the component which holds the phone is misaligned with the plane of the eyepiece, and the axis of the rack-and-pinion to which it is attached, and is also slightly twisted across its width. For the price, and given the design effort, I expected the material choice and manufacturing / assembly execution to be better. 5. There is clearly quite a bit of flexibility in the structure. Several millimetres of clearance between the eyepiece and the camera support plate can be take up with the slightest of pressure, and this flexibility shows up when the camera is loaded, and the binoculars are tilted. The strength of the rack and pinion adjustment (in all three axis) combined with the weak grip of the eyepiece mean that in-situ adjustment can be fiddly. The structural strength of the combined assembly is inherently weak at the rack and pinions - don't know what they could do to design that out... 6. Protruding screws in several places. Will they fall out? For the price, you'd think they'd throw in a couple of cheap jeweller's screwdrivers and some instructions on how to fine tune and adjust the assembly. Would I buy it again? Probably not. Do I wish I'd read the other reviews before purchasing? Yip. Will I return it? No, it'll do. And I may even dismantle it, and modify it, to overcome some of the above defects. Maybe. Some rainy Sunday afternoon. Or maybe I'll stick to my Gosky mount. And by a telescope with a T-mount for my DSLR.

good

If I had bought an unbranded, cheap and nasty product of this type from eBay, and found it didn't work, I'd have been disappointed, but not surprised. After all, sticking your phone camera up to a telescope is hardly a natural thing to do, and I'd expect it to fail more often than it worked. But this is a branded product from a reputable manufacturer, and it's expensive. So I was bitterly and profoundly disappointed when I found it didn't work. Here are only some of the problems. - The clamp that holds the phone sort-of folds over the edges of the screen -- right where the camera controls are. It's difficult to set up the camera software when the phone is in the clamp. - The advertisement says that the device will work even with a phone in a case. That's clearly untrue if you have a case that folds open, because the clamp prevents it opening. - The device is in two parts, joined only by the rack-and-pinion mechanism that adjusts the distance between the phone and the eyepiece. This mechanism is not made to tight tolerances (that's putting it politely) and it wobbles. So when the phone is in the clamp, it moves with respect to the eyepiece at the slightest movement or vibration. This makes both alignment and focusing difficult. - It's very difficult to get the phone near enough to the eyepiece so that the image fills the screen. Or, frankly, is even visible. The minimum distance between the back of the phone and the nearest part of the eyepiece clamp is about a half-inch, and that's only if some part of the clamp does not foul the telescope body. - There are, as promised, three axes of adjustment. However, the control for one of these is hard to reach when the phone is mounted. I found that, with a lot of fiddling, I could sometimes get an image. But this required three hands to hold everything steady, and I didn't have a fourth hand to operate the camera controls on the phone. I tried with two different phones (Note 8 and S10e) and telescope, binoculars, and a rifle scope. No amount of fiddling gave me a picture that was in proper focus, and there was horribly chromatic fringing even on the best shots. I think the fringing is caused by the optical axes of the camera and the eyepiece can't be brought into proper alignment. I'm amazed that some people have been able to get decent pictures with this device. I can only imagine that they were lucky, or not very fussy. OK, so it's a phone camera, so I wasn't expecting miracles. But I didn't expect the device to be so impractical to use, nor the results so awful.

Highly adjustable and well-engineered. Very quick to mount the phone, it grips well and is easy to position accurately. The friction of each individual axis can be increased with a small screw (separate from the main adjustment) to ensure the phone stays in place. So far I’ve only tried it with a pair of binoculars but it worked well. More expensive that many other mounts but you definitely get what you pay for.

I bought the Celestron NeXYZ despite the mixed reviews, for my fieldscope rather than telescope. I have got the adaptor working well now after experimentation: 1. It is important to tighten all the screws, as well as the tensioning screws (but not too far as to inhibit smooth xyz movements). 2. My main issue was that the focal point of the phone camera lens was repeatedly off centre from the focal point of the eyepiece image requiring more digital zoom and a reduction in photo quality. I thought this was due to the use of multiple lenses on my phone. In fact, I noted that the phone was at a skewed angle to the eyepiece - this was because on the adaptor the eyepiece clamp and phone clamp did not align and was slightly off-level. There is no way to adjust this on the adaptor, which is a flaw the manufacturer has missed and would have been easy enough to incorporate. I managed to align the eyepiece and phone clamp by inserting a little piece of plastic as a 'spacer' in the rear screwed fixture. This sorted the issue nicely. 3. It is important to ensure the eyepiece clamp is correctly fitted so the phone is level to the eyepiece. This is is quite simple after a few go's. 4. This adaptor works much better on wider ocular eyepiece lenses, which is logical as there is a greater image diameter to align the phone lens to. 5. I found my stock camera app to be of little use, best to experiment with others which allow better manual control. Pro Camera X on Android works well. This adaptor is very useful in the way it allows xyz movements, allowing fairly swift alignment with the ocular image. However, the off-level alignment with the eyepiece and phone clamp on the adaptor is an issue and is probably as result of the polymer plastic construction. This is an easy fix, however, for a price tag of £50, I do feel that I shouldn't have to. I am happy with this adaptor now I have fixed the issues, although I do wonder whether cheaper models would do just as good of a job.