...because it seems there is not alot of Nexstar SE Info out there

The idea for starting my own website/blog came to me when I was looking for information about the Nexstar SE series telescopes on the internet. There are a couple of amateur sites out there (check the list of sites on the left) as well as the official Celestron website but I found that most of these sites were sometimes catered to the seasoned amateur astronomer and were a little difficult for me to understand. So I decided to write down my experience with this telescope so that maybe someone else might benefit from it. Oh - and I don't have any connections to Celestron - I only chose the orange color for the blog since I thought it would go nice with all the pictures of an orange telescope ...

Friday, January 15, 2010

balancing the optical tube


"you need to know if your optical tube is front heavy or rear heavy"
When i asked some questions with regard to the best possible setup for astrophotography, especially with regard to the final approach while aligning an object, i was told to make sure that the optical tube is properly balanced.

The nice people at cloudynights.com told me to remove the OTA and place it on a pencil with all the photography gear attached and to make sure that i mark the spot where the whole chebang is all nicely balanced.

So here we go with some pictures:

Step 1: Ask your wife to hold on to the OTA while you detach the OTA. My regular prism and eyepiece are still attached.



Step 2: Place the high tech balancing device (pencil) underneath the tube


Placing the pencil under the tube proved to be difficult because the whole setup was leaning to one side, towards me (due to the extra weight of the finderscope) and did not stay level on the table.

Step 3: Attach your photography gear and find the sweet spot






After some minutes of fiddling i think i found the sweet spot and marked it ( i had to get a second pencil : )) on the OTA. I first made a mark on the black rail that later "slips" into the mount and had to draw it again onto the tube because the mark of course got hidden inside the mount's base.

..and the result ?
Now that i have the tube back on the mount, i can see that it has moved quite a bit forward compared to before the balancing process. So it looks like it was quite a bit "rear heavy" before this procedure. The rail that is attached to the tube does not even stick out the end of the mounting base anymore. I'll add a picture that shows this later - my wife is waiting for me to watch another episode of Dexter together... ; )

here's the result. You can see that the tube has now moved quite a bit forward, leaving a gap.








8 comments:

  1. Excelent blog Marc.

    I'm Demian from Buenos Aires Argentina.

    I'm thinking seriously to buy this telescope by the end of this year (while, I'm saving some money).
    So I will follow very closer the info you post here.
    See you.

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  2. Hi Demian - thanks for your kind comments. Now that the weather over here is getting a little warmer, i'll start using the telescope again and i hope to be adding more content to the blog as well !

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  3. Marc. Now, that your "observation season" almost begins, are you planning to post some stories about the observation sessions?. I mean, it would be cool for every NexStar owner to know the experiences of someone else using the equipment, posts like, "tonight I've pointed to M42 using 25mm eyepiece. The nebula looked brighter and I could see the Trapezium cluster within the nebula... bla bla bla"
    Writing these kind of stories is funny and also read them is nice.
    Keep at the good work.
    Regards.

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  4. Hi this is very interesting. I will be purcasing a 6se soon and would like to get into astrophotography. I have an Olympus dslr.

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  5. Marc,
    I looked around for info on this. I have an Orion autoguider package, Orion DS monochrome imager, and an Orion flip mirror on the rear of my NexStar 6SE. The scope only wants to move in one direction due to the weight. You have any ideas on how to add more weights to this single arm set-up? Ever hear of anyone stripping the gears on one of these?
    Regards,
    Josh
    Sacramento, CA

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  6. Hello brother! I helped your site. Thank you. Greetings from Moscow ...

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  7. I am a new owner of a Celestron 8SE. Very interested to get started, then move towards astrophotography.
    I am a bit scared to get started, as I am alone in this and ignorant of setting up the telescope the first time. I will come back to this blog to see if I can pick up some tricks.

    Thanks,
    Andrew in Calgary,Alberta

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  8. Hi if you go into the Hand controle of the 6SE go to Calibrate GOTO after you have loaded your Cemara onto your scope press Enter this will calibrte the motors to determine where the weight is It is sencible to help the motors by putting the scope back as far as possible leaving the scope fully on the Mounting Rail (No Gap)
    View this guy on utube Baltier2705 He like me has the 6SE But it should be tthe same for you as the 6 and 6 use the same GOTO's





















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