Includes a camera control feature and shutter release cable that allows you to remotely take a series of exposures using your digital SLR camera The 4 SE includes a camera control feature that allows you to remotely take a series of timed exposures using your digital SLR camera. Plus the Flip Mirror Control, Straight Through Photographic Port and Tripod featuring a built-in wedge help make short-exposure astrophotography a heavenly experience.

The Celestron NexStar 4SE computerized telescope comes with a single 25mm Plossl eyepiece, yielding 55x. This is good as a low-power or “finder” eyepiece for viewing deep-sky objects and initially aligning the telescope. But for optimal usage of the telescope, you’ll want something for higher magnifications, such as a 9mm or 6mm “goldline” or some other good eyepieces, and perhaps a 32mm Plossl for the widest field of view possible. The only other accessory included with the 4SE is its StarPointer red-dot finder, which is used for aligning the telescope’s GoTo system. The NexStar 4SE Mount This makes the scope great for bright, narrow-field work, such as viewing planets and double stars, but less so for dimmer, wide-field objects such as nebulae and star clusters. Insert batteries: Open the telescope cover, insert 8 AA batteries ensuring correct polarity, and replace the cover. Strong and sturdy – With its well made adjustable tripod and rugged design, this one is ideal for stargazing just about anywhere. The instructions included in the kit are easy to follow, and getting the GoTo and SkyAlign set up sorted is simple and took around 20 minutes. It helps that SkyAlign is fully automated, but you must be sure to use the red dot finder to locate the stars, not the scope itself. What accessories do you get?Grab a 9mm or 6mm Goldline eyepiece to get higher magnification. Also, having a good Barlow lens will double your eyepiece collection and will provide more magnification options with one eyepiece. This option costs about the same as the 4SE but gives you an extra inch of aperture and gathers 56% more light! You’ll see more detail and fainter objects (especially as its focal ratio of f/5 is more suited to deep space objects). It also has the same GoTo capabilities as the SE range. The Celestron NexStar 4SE is very easy to set up. In just a few steps, you can get the telescope up and running. Here is how to set up the telescope:

Telescopes work by gathering light and the more light they collect, the more objects and details we can see. Unfortunately, the 4-inch aperture of this telescope is too small to reveal most of the objects in the database, especially under light-polluted skies. The database of the mount includes more than 38,000 objects to look at. But honestly, the 4SE telescope is built mainly for planetary and moon observations rather than observing deep-sky objects. These have mostly the same features and characteristics of the 4SE, but the bigger apertures reveal much more detail and let you delve into fainter deep sky objects.For example, the 2x Barlow lens will give you 110x magnification with the included 25mm eyepiece. The 3x Barlow lens has 165x magnification with the same eyepiece. Because of the Maksutov Cassegrain design, the 4SE can provide high magnifications. Magnification is calculated by dividing the telescope’s focal length by the eyepiece’s focal length. Therefore the long focal length of the 4SE is a significant advantage if you are looking for a high-magnification telescope to observe planets.

It is complicated to set up and polar align. It doesn’t have a polar scope, which makes it even harder. It would be best to have the equatorial mount for long-exposure astrophotography, which, unfortunately, this telescope and mount are not made for. Don’t forget that the highest useful magnification for the Celestron Nexstar 4SE is 240x, so don’t go lower than 6mm eyepiece. The Celestron Nexstar 4SE mount is unique because it has a built-in equatorial wedge to transform the alt-azimuth mount into the equatorial mount. It sounds cool, but you may never use it.Its aperture and field of view are limiting factors. Many deep-sky objects will not fit in this field of view, or they are very faint to see any details with a 4-inch aperture. If you’re looking to take images of the night sky, stop reading here and instead see our Best Telescopes for Astrophotography. Alternatives The Celestron NexStar 4SE is a great telescope for beginner astronomers. That’s because of its portable size and a motorized mount. With your fingernail on either side of the battery, pry the battery up and out of the battery compartment.