Celestron StarSense Autoguider

Celestron StarSense Autoguider Summary

Automatic Alignment: Be Ready to Observe in Minutes

The StarSense Autoguider aligns your telescope to the night sky in about three minutes with the press of a button—no user input is needed. Celestron’s patented StarSense technology “sees” star patterns overhead and matches them to its internal database to automatically orient the telescope. This feature eliminates the hassle of manually aligning your telescope, so you can focus on what’s important—observing and imaging.

Precise GoTo: Supercharge Your Pointing Accuracy

Celestron’s computerised mounts are already hailed for their pointing accuracy, but your mount gets even better when you add the StarSense Autoguider. Instead of placing celestial objects within the telescope’s field of view, Precise GoTo places them in the center of the field—even if you’re using a high-powered eyepiece or today’s small imaging sensors.

Compatible Telescopes

• Advanced VX
• CGX-L
• CPC, CPC DX
• NexStar Evolution
• NexStar SE Series
• CGEM II
• CGX CGEM / CGEM DX
• CGE Pro

Celestron StarSense Autoguider in More Detail

Autoguiding: Create Your Celestial Masterpiece

Capturing images of astronomical objects is one of the most exciting things you can do with your telescope. But to capture stunning deep-sky astro images, you need autoguiding—the power to make tiny adjustments to the mount’s tracking to keep your target locked in over long exposures. Previous autoguiding setups were complex and expensive, usually involving a separate autoguiding camera, a guide-scope, and a computer. StarSense Autoguider replaces all that—so even beginners can dive head-first into the world of imaging. Your targets are crisp and detailed, while background stars look like sharp pinpoints, never oblong or streaky.

Assisted Polar Alignment: Dial in the Best Alignment Possible

Many users find that adding StarSense Autoguider to their setup improves accuracy so dramatically that they no longer need to polar align their German equatorial mounts for most casual observing and imaging.

But if you want to achieve the best accuracy possible, the autoguider dramatically simplifies the polar alignment process. Simply follow the on-screen instructions on the hand control or in the CPWI software, and you can complete a full polar alignment in less than five minutes.

High-quality 4-element Optical Design

The StarSense Autoguider features a high-quality 4-element optical design devised by the famed optical designer Mark Ackermann. Its unique design delivers sharper images than other mini-guide-scopes. The optical tube is threaded to accept 2” astronomical filters. Add an IR-pass filter to align your mount in twilight or a neutral density filter for daytime focusing.

The device also includes an onboard computer and a highly sensitive Sony IMX290-DLL monochrome CMOS image sensor, all working together to provide exceptional guiding accuracy. You can view a live image from the camera via your PC if desired.

Advanced options

Advanced users will love fine-tuning their autoguiding setup via CPWI’s advanced settings. You can enable dithering options to move the mount slightly between camera sub-exposures, which may help your image processing software perform at its best.

You can also guide on a comet via CPWI. Simply select the comet from the software’s regularly updated database of more than 100,000 celestial objects. Guiding directly on the comet will produce better results than guiding on nearby stars.

Best of all, you can unlock more exciting features like these throughout the lifetime of your StarSense Autoguider. Your purchase grants you access to all subsequent firmware updates. Celestron engineers are constantly adding new functionality to our products, and with a simple firmware update, you’ll always be able to enjoy the latest and greatest.

Works with your current setup

You choose how you want to control your StarSense Autoguider. It works with your NexStar+ hand control, CPWI telescope control software via a wired PC connection or WiFi (with a WiFi-enabled mount or the SkyPortal WiFi Module accessory). The autoguider also works with the rest of your Celestron accessories for a seamless solution that fits in perfectly with your telescope setup.

StarSense Autoguider works with most current Celestron computerized mounts, both German equatorial and altazimuth. See the chart below for full compatibility details.

WARNING: DO NOT PLUG THE STARSENSE AUTOGUIDER INTO YOUR MOUNT’S AUTOGUIDER PORT! The StarSense Autoguider connects to one of your mount’s AUX ports, connecting it to the Autoguider port can damage the StarSense Autoguider