In December 2019, my family bought me a Celestron NexStar 5SE Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope for Christmas. The last telescope I had owned was a 4” aperture, 700mm Greenkat Newtonian, which unfortunately sustained damage to the primary mirror and was therefore discarded.After several observing sessions with the 5SE, I decided to clean the corrector plate and eyepiece lens. As I started on the corrector plate, I noticed what appeared to be a kind of wheat-grain “husk” or similar, stuck under the plate’s retaining ring at about the front 10 o’clock position. In looking more closely, I discovered that this husk was not in fact outside but actually inside the tube, behind the corrector plate glass next to the plate’s support flange. ( On reflection, this came as no surprise really, as I had only then recently discovered that the telescope was made in China. Like many, I’ve historically had much disappointment with products made there. )I contacted Celestron UK informing them about this and was surprised to be told that this situation was straightforward enough for me to rectify myself. Since this was a brand new and delicate piece of expensive equipment, I declined to do this, stating that as this was a manufacturing defect, I wanted it sorted under warranty. Afterwards, having received the tube back from Celestron, I noticed that they had in fact sent a new one, i.e., the serial number was different - so perhaps it wasn’t that easy to fix after all !Then in November of 2020, I found that the “red dot” finder scope was beginning to perform intermittently when the rheostat wheel was turned. I reported this to Celestron who sent me out a replacement. However this one is monstrous by comparison and instead of the red dot, it shows a sort of wide set of red concentric circles which make it very difficult to slew on to the target star. I put up with this one for a while but then, on following an Internet tutorial, I had some success repairing the original. ( It worked for a while but sadly has recently begun failing again. Apparently the rheostat control knob slips past its own stop and this pulls on the wires. )While I feel that the Go To function is good, I have to say that I have been fairly unimpressed with the over all quality of the imagery with the 5SE. When I think back on using the modest 4” Greenkat, I found that the Andromeda Galaxy core was very easy to see - the Celestron is somewhat indistinct by comparison ; M57, the Lyra ring nebula appeared as a definite smoke-ring shape while the 5SE displays it as a round blob. With M27, the Dumbbell Nebula, the Greenkat offered a view which had 2 distinct dumbbell shaped lobes while the Celestron’s image appears to be more circular. And even with the GoTo function, if the initial Sky Alignment isn’t absolutely spot on then a bit of hunting for the Globular Cluster in Hercules is invariably required.In other words, a 4” manual telescope which I owned over 30 years ago was in fact superior in clarity to what I have now. And yes, I know - 30 years is a long time eyesight-wise, but mine is pretty good.If this hadn’t been bought as a gift, I would have changed it some time ago. I couldn’t recommend Celestron products to any prospective purchasers.P.S. The moon looks quite good, but then it does so through a pair of binoculars.
Claim your business profile now and gain access to all features and respond to customer reviews.
Celestron is a company based in Torrance, California, United States, that manufactures telescopes and distributes telescopes, binoculars, spotting scopes, microscopes, and accessories manufactured by its parent company, the Synta Technology Corporation...