Celestron Starsense Explorer DX 8" Dobsonian

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{Description}Unleash the power of your smartphone to take you on a guided tour of the night sky—no telescope experience required.
Patented, award-winning StarSense sky recognition technology uses your smartphone to analyze star patterns overhead and calculate the telescope’s position in real-time.
A large 8” parabolic primary mirror with XLT coatings helps you make the most of StarSense technology. Locate faint, deep-sky objects in seconds and see them in more detail than ever before.
A sturdy, Dobsonian-style base with large diameter bearings and variable altitude tensioning makes it easy to follow the on-screen arrows to your desired target. When the bullseye turns green, it's ready to view in the telescope's eyepiece.
StarSense Explorer Powered by SkySafari™ app automatically generates a list of objects currently visible. View planets, brighter nebulae and galaxies, star clusters, and double stars from the city. Or take your telescope to darker skies to see even more.
Includes a 25mm Plössl eyepiece, a 2” Crayford focuser, the StarSense smartphone dock, a StarPointer™ red dot finderscope, an eyepiece rack, and a collimation tool.

{Specification}
Optical Design: Newtonian Reflector
Aperture: 203mm (8")
Focal Length: 1200mm (47.24")
Focal Ratio: f/5.9
Focal Length of Eyepiece 1: 25mm (0.98")
Magnification of Eyepiece 1: 48x
Highest Useful Magnification: 480x
Lowest Useful Magnification: 29x
Limiting Stellar Magnitude: 14.2
Light Gathering Power: 841x as compared to the human eye
Optical Coatings: XLT reflective coatings with silicon dioxide and tantalum pentoxide protective overcoatings for primary and secondary mirrors
Mirror Material: Pyrex equivalent for primary and secondary mirrors
Primary Mirror Thickness: 25mm (0.98") (approx. 1:8 thickness ratio)
Secondary Mirror Thickness: 8.5mm (0.33")
Minor Axis of Secondary Mirror: 47mm (1.85")
Tube Material: Steel
Focuser: 2" Crayford focuser, includes 2" extension tube and 2"-to-1.25" adapter
Finderscope: StarPointer™ red-dot finderscope
Resolution Rayleigh: 0.68 arcseconds
Resolution Dawes: 0.57 arcseconds
Optical Tube Dimensions: 1117.6mm x 241.3mm diameter (44" x 9.5" diameter)
Optical Tube Weight: 20.6 lbs (9.34 kg)
MOUNT INFO:
Mount Type: Altazimuth Dobsonian base
Base Material: Particle board with melamine surfaces and edge trim, CARB compliant
Base Dimensions: 685.8mm x 482.6mm x 482.6mm (27" x 19" x 19")
Base Weight: 22.8 lbs (10.3 kg)
Slew Speeds: Manual
Software: Celestron Starry Night Basic Edition Software and StarSense Explorer App
Total Telescope Kit Weight: 43.4 lbs (19.68 kg)
Included Items: Optical tube
Dobsonian Base
25mm eyepiece
2" Crayford focuser
StarPointer™ red-dot finderscope
StarSense Explorer dock
StarSense Explorer unlock code
Eyepiece rack
Collimation cap
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StarSense Explorer’s sky recognition technology has revolutionized the manual telescope by eliminating the confusion common among beginners and enhancing the user experience for even seasoned telescope users.

Many would-be astronomers become frustrated or lose interest in their manual (i.e. non-computerized) telescope because they don’t where to point it to see planets, star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies—the good stuff!

StarSense Explorer tells you exactly which celestial objects are currently visible in the night sky and where to move your telescope to place those objects in the telescope’s eyepiece. What’s more, you can access detailed information and even audio descriptions for the most popular objects while you observe. No prior knowledge of the night sky is required.

At the heart of the system is StarSense Explorer’s sky recognition and sky mapping capability. The StarSense Explorer uses your smartphone to very accurately determine its pointing position by “plate solving.”.

The StarSense Dock
The StarSense dock—a special bracket that couples the smartphone to the StarSense Explorer telescope—holds the smartphone in place over an integrated mirror. The star patterns overhead reflect off the mirror and into the smartphone’s camera. The mirror is tilted slightly relative to the telescope to provide better performance when locating objects low in the sky.

The dock holds most smartphones with their cases attached. It’s equipped with X-Y adjustment knobs to help you position the camera over the mirror. The dock also features a built-in shade around the mirror to prevent stray light from entering the smartphone camera’s field of view.

The StarSense Explorer app runs on a user-supplied smartphone attached to the StarSense Explorer telescope via the StarSense dock. When you launch the app, it guides you through a simple two-step procedure to align the smartphone’s camera with the telescope’s field of view.

Next, the app displays a view of the night sky and shows a bullseye on the screen to represent the telescope’s current pointing position. From here, you can select an object to view, either by tapping it in the planetarium view or selecting it from the Tonight’s Best observing list. Objects that are highlighted in the planetarium view or listed as Tonight’s Best list are our recommended targets—all currently visible above the horizon from your observing site. You’ll see a variety of objects, which will vary from night to night. You may see planets like Jupiter or Saturn, nebulae like Orion, the Andromeda Galaxy, or other object types.

Once you select an object, the app displays pointing arrows onscreen. These indicate the direction in which you should move the telescope to find the object. Move the telescope as directed until the bullseye appears centered on the selected object onscreen. When the bullseye changes its color to green, the object is visible in the telescope’s lower powered eyepiece.

You can observe the object while listening to an audio presentation or you can peruse other object information and data within the app. There are even observing tips to help get the best view possible though the telescope for the selected object.

Celestron developed the StarSense Explorer app in collaboration with our friends at Simulation Curriculum, the makers of the industry-leading planetarium app, Sky Safari. You can trust the StarSense Explorer app to provide the most accurate models of the night sky, with thousands of celestial objects in the database.

StarSense Explorer uses image data captured by the smartphone’s camera to determine its pointing position. The app captures an image of the night sky and then matches the star patterns within the image to its internal database in a process similar to fingerprint matching or facial recognition.

Essentially, StarSense Explorer uses the smartphone’s camera as its “eye” and the smartphone’s processing power as its “brain.” The camera looks out at the night sky, and then the processor figures out where the telescope is pointing based upon the calculated center coordinates of the captured image.

The process of extracting star pattern data in images to determine a telescope’s current pointing position is called “plate solving.” It is the same method used by professional observatories and even orbiting satellites.