Telescope Reviews: Nexstar 8se EQ Wedge Alignment Procedure

Dear Don,

I was happy to see your post as I just recently got the bug and bought my own 8SE and then immediately started looking at astrophotography. I've had pretty amazing success just taking pictures through the eyepiece using my little Canon point and shoot before I started buying any accessories. I even took a few medium length (~15 second) exposures by using a separate tripod to hold the camera in front of the lense.

I bought the universal camera mount, which works pretty well for holding my SD700, but almost immediately turned around and bought my Nikon D90 (FINALLY an excuse to get a DSLR!) and various T adapters and the Celestron wedge. Thus, I was grateful to see your post and the other reference someone mentioned in this thread that discuss the alignment procedure.

So far, I've attempted the alignment a couple of times but am still not satisfied that I'm getting good results. For a long (several minute) exposure, I get small trails with dots at either end, that seems to indicate to me that the scope is jumping. At this point I'm thinking it's a balance issue giving the drive problems. I notice you don't appear to have or mention any counterweights, but was wondering if you've looked at this since. In looking at the design of the 8SE, it's apparent that the typical weight system that mounts to the OTA is NOT the appropriate solution for this.

It turns out that JMI has made a counterweight that mounts to the mounting bar for the OTA, which is where it would need to be to move the CG back over the azimuth axis. What's the chance anyone has used this and can comment on how well it works? Unfortunately it doesn't allow for moving the weights further away from the OTA, so I'm concerned that balancing may require additional weight rather than taking advantage of additional leverage. I'm also a bit concerned about the mount chewing up the bar on my OTA. Thus, I'm trying to decide between spending the $60 to try that out vs. rigging something on my own.

At any rate, Don, the original question I wanted to ask you was if you could post a bit more detail on the steps you took to tighten the bearing assembly on your 8SE. I'm not sure if I want to go for that yet, especially if it's just a balance issue. Of course given that I've now put more money into accessories than into the scope itself, I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't just trade my new 8SE in for something with a bit heftier drive and a better balance system.

I look forward to hearing from you and anyone else who has a comment and am attaching a pic to give people an idea what I've accomplished so far. This is a through-the-lens hand-held shot of the moon using my DS700 taken last month. Unfortunately it won't let me post the full 2816x2112 resolution! I also have a pretty good stack-up of Jupiter (done manually in Corel PhotoPaint) that I'll post some other time, and a couple of half-way decent shots of the ring nebula.

Beo