My frustration levels are off the chart with my astronomy hobby. I just can’t seem to raise my capacity high enough to have a consistently positive outing. This is what I was afraid of when I bought the scope and was the main reason I went with the scope I did — a Celestron NexStar 8SE. Designed as an “easy” entry scope, it comes with a bunch of computerized innards that basically allow you to point it at three bright stars, tell the computer in it where they are, the computer figures out which ones are which, and bob’s your uncle, the scope is fully aligned. On a stock alt-azimuth scope, there’s not much finesse for the user to worry about in the setup. Or so I thought.

However, early on, I was using it and I could find a few things once aligned, but not much that wasn’t already visible to the naked eye. I eventually figured out the problem was not a series of various options it could have been, it was narrowed to one. My alignment sucks (Finally learning with the Celestron NexStar 8SE).

So I came up with a workflow to increase the success factors and eliminate the idiot factors:

1. Mount — basic setup, using vibration suppression pads and if I’m feeling particularly anal, a bubble level — most people using this scope skip the level as it “close enough” apparently that unless you’re on a hill, it should be irrelevant, but I have it on my list just to weed out a variable;
2. Alignment control — using either phone/tablet connected to the wifi adapter or manually using the handset; and,
3. Star selection — using a TelRad to get close to the star, and a 12mm red-illuminated reticle eyepiece for selection.