Nexstar 6 SE Advice

Hi All,

I have a full post in the beginners forum with a couple of questions about buying a Nexstar for my first scope, and I figured it's also relevant here so I'm double posting it for that reason. I just have a couple of questions I'm looking for advice on answering, and I'm hoping someone can help.

I do live in England, in a small village in the East Anglian countryside, and light pollution is pretty low here. There's also a playing field in the village that's quite high up about 1km from the center of the village, that I intend to go to fairly regularly as it's pretty dark up there.

It'd be my first time using a scope too, which is a lot of the reason I want to get a GoTo scope.

I'm fairly familiar with the night sky though as I have binos and I regularly photograph stars, planets and the moon with my DSLR. I actually picked up Jupiter, Io, Europa and Ganymede from my bedroom window last week, with only a 200mm telephoto lens and a 25sec exposure, which I was delighted with, but that's another story!

I actually have a couple of new questions:

After lots of deliberation, I'm thinking I might stump up the cash for the Nexstar 6SE. The extra aperture should give me the added light boost to get the photos I want of Saturn and Jupiter and from what I understand, I should at least be able to see a few DSOs.

Could anybody recommend a couple of eyepieces to grab along with the obvious 2x Barlow and the 25mm that the scope comes with? I'm looking to get maybe a couple of others. I'd like to see as much as the scope can handle really, to justify over-doubling the cost from my original choice of the 4SE.

Also, I know that talking about Astrophotography may be a little premature for a newbie with a 6" SCT, but in anybodies opinion, will it be any use at all for getting even basic photos of any Nebulae? I'm sure I can get lunar and planetary fine with it (If i can get Jupiter and 3 moons with my camera alone, I'm hoping I can presume this!), but I just need to know if the scope will be any use for this at all, even with the further expense of a wedge and webcams.

I'm just needing to get some justification for buying the actual scope at first and don't want to make a mistake by going in for something that can't handle what I'm interested in!

Thanks for any help you can offer guys!

Rob

The original thread is here.
http://www.cloudynig...5/o/all/fpart/1

Any advice is greatly appreciated

Particularly regarding whether this scope would ever be any good for basic DSO photography with some money thrown at it in the future. I just can't justify buying something specifically for that purpose for my first scope, and with current funds

i would use a 32mm for dso's and it helps with the aligment process, by aligning stars with the 32mm, then switching to a 10mm to 'perfect' the aligment (but that might be a bit ahead of things ). with those eyepieces thru a barlow you have 16 and 5 mm too!
i got my 6se a few months ago and i love it, i did research it a lot before buying but i was happy i did. wait til you see jupiter and moons thru the 6se, and it is now the time for jupiter in the southern sky.
i would totally recommend it but i am not doing any astrophotography except for taking pics by putting the camera up to the eyepiece, great moon pics that way by the way. you will need a power source other than aa batteries, check the forums...also look at my signature for the equipment i already got after owning the 6se for a few months!

Thanks for that It's always good to get opinion from someone that owns the thing!

One thing I can't find out for definite is whether the 6SE comes with a built-in wedge. Would you know? Some places advertise it as built-in, and some not. Confusing!

Can't wait to see Jupiter properly with my own eyes! I'm hoping to make the purchase for this weekend if I can get enough information on the scope to prise open my wallet!

What's it like for deep sky stuff? Visually, rather than photographically.

(a) Welcome!

(b) The 6SE does not come with a wedge. (At least, not in the US). It does come with a tripod. Celestron sells a wedge, or if you're good at building things, there are ideas for building your own wedge. That said, mounting the Alt/Az drive on a wedge makes the mount less stable. (Of course, being in a more northerly latitude, your wedge angle is smaller... A wedge mounted scope in, say Ecuador would be ...interesting to see...)

Good luck!

Thanks for that It's always good to get opinion from someone that owns the thing!

One thing I can't find out for definite is whether the 6SE comes with a built-in wedge. Would you know? Some places advertise it as built-in, and some not. Confusing!

Can't wait to see Jupiter properly with my own eyes! I'm hoping to make the purchase for this weekend if I can get enough information on the scope to prise open my wallet!

What's it like for deep sky stuff? Visually, rather than photographically.

Hi Rob,

I won't try to advise you on EPs because I always feel that this is a matter of individual taste notwithstanding personal budget considerations, but I can say a little in terms of astro-imaging if it helps.

The 6SE is perfectly capable of being used to image many DSOs so long as exposure times are kept to the minimum possible in order to prevent the onset of field rotation becoming all too apparent in your picture. You are thus restricted to those DSOs which are relatively bright. That's not to say though that the choice is, in any way, too limited. (M42, M27, M57, M51 and most globular clusters are for example, relatively easy to image)

As you may already appreciate, field rotation cannot be eliminated using the standard Alt./Az. mount nor in my opinion, will wedge mounting a 6SE provide the answer.

My own experience with a combination of my own Nexstar 8i and the Celestron wedge convinces me that despite all meritable adverts , wedge mounting these 'scopes just doesn't work ! (For this reason, I have recently bought myself a HEQ5-Pro on which to mount my N8i OTA in order to be able to image those fainter DSOs).

Remember also, that the 6SE has a focal ratio of 10, so in standard form your FOV will be somewhat restricted when it comes to imaging some DSOs. I would therefore seriously think of investing in a focal reducer/field flattener to effect a substantial increase in the scope's FOV; two of which, as you probably know, are available for the 6SE. (The Celestron or Meade 6.3 FR and the Meade 3.3 FR).

Hoping this helps,
Best Regards,
Tel

your welcome. i dont think it has a built in wedge, my manual seems to refer to that as a seperate accessory, download the manual at celestron.com, it should answer some questions you have (hopefully)
deep sky, i can get m81 and m82 both within the 32mm eyepiece field of view. they are very faint but worth seeing, i have seen the ring nebula (m57 i think) and it is again faint but its knowing what you are looking at rather than how much detail you get! i cant say i was blown away by the 'fuzzies' as people call them but i did grow to appreciate what i was seeing.
the most important thing i feel for the 6se is getting a good aligment at the start of your session (plenty of tips here) as it really does all the work for you. i browsed this forum a lot and got fantastic tips that are not mentioned in the manual.
if you do get the se6, get a powertank or ac plug as AA batteries dont cut it, believe me.
hope i could be of some help.

Hi Rob,

I've just seen the other postings which must have been made while I was writing to you.

On the subject of wedges, the 4SE and the 5SE have built in ones: the 6SE and the 8SE do not and require the separately marketed item.

As I said though, if you take my advice, don't go down that route ! My experience tells me they simply don't work. Certainly with an 8" N8i !

Best regards,
Tel

Thanks, Tel, I completely didn't think of starting with the Nexstar mount and moving onto an EQ mount later if I'm interested in that.

That's a very interesting proposition indeed! I'm not sure how I hadn't thought of it. Very useful! The wedging concept does seem a halfway house of sorts, so it's not hard for me to believe that it doesn't work too well.

And alser, thanks very much for your comments. Knowing what I'll be able to see is invaluable! And yeah, a powertank is on my hit-list. Batteries are too expensive even if they did work properly! I'll also have a read of some alignment tips!

Cheers guys!

Hi Rob,

Glad to help.

Incidentally, I forgot to welcome you heartedly to CN. I'm sure you'll find it a mine of information and advice at your finger tips should you require such.

Best Regards.
Tel

also glad to help, tis a fun hobby we have here and even more fun to share, i even got my mum to fall in love with saturn ha ha!

I bought a Nexstar 6 SE and as a special offer got the Celestron heavy duty equatorial wedge. Am now ready to use this.
(1) The Celestron stuff gives me very little guidance on how to set this up - anyone done this before?
(2) There seems to be a lot of criticism on the site of using an equ mount with this scope - does auto guiding help?
(3) Do I have any chance of doing decent dso astrophotography with this arrangement?

Hi Marshad,

Firstly a very warm welcome to CN !

Are you sure you have a heavy duty wedge rather than the standard one ? I don't have a picture to hand of the HD, but here's a shot of the standard wedge :-

http://s151.photobuc...um/DSC01033.jpg

In answer to your second and third questions, auto-guiding will not help. The roots of the problem lie in the instability of the one arm design when mounted on the wedge coupled with the SE's spur gear drive.

While this drive is perfectly suitable for tracking objects when merely viewing and in Alt./Az. mode, it is not good enough to support medium to long exposure imaging.

Speaking from my very limited experience of imaging with my Nexstar 8i / Meade DSI combination, I would therefore recommend that you forget the wedge.

I don't know what camera type you intend to use but it is entirely possible for your 6SE to image, the Moon, the Sun (sunspots), the brighter planets and many of the brighter DSOs (e.g. M27, M57, M82, M13 etc.) with the 'scope mounted Alt.Az.

These objects do not require particularly extended exposure times and therefore will allow you to get away with virtually no field rotation as would clearly be evident in your images if the exposure times were protracted much beyond say, 15secs.

I hope this helps,
Best regards,
Tel

Tel

Thanks for the reply - i think i am on the standard wedge.

What I dont understand is why autoguiding wont work - will this not correct for the instability?

Hi Marshad,

The instability is too great and unpredictable. Even making an intial alignment is nigh on impossible in my limited experience.

I say "limited" because after all the intial failures and efforts to discover their reasons, I tried again some months back to see whether I had missed something vital when I first attempted to wedge mount my N8i. As expected though, I just could not effect a cure. For that reason I invested in the Skywatcher HEQ5-Pro.

Use the 6SE in Alt./Az.mode for some basic imaging as I outlined and it'll work fine but I still recommend that you dump the wedge.

If you want more opinions though, why not ask around on the CN "Mounts" forum ?

Hope this helps you a little further,
Best Regards,
Tel

BTW. Some examples of images taken with the N8i in Alt./Az. mode. The 6SE should be well capable of improving upon these !

http://s151.photobuc...er5712-4-08.jpg

http://s151.photobuc...m/M42B-9208.jpg