Issues with Celestron GPS scope and new hand remote

[jruckgaber0518]

Hey guys,

I have an 8 inch Celestron GPS scope. About a year and a half ago, my hand remote no longer worked. I contacted Celestron and they indicated I needed a new hand remote. It took over a year to arrive. With this new remote, the GPS align option is no longer available. Celestron's suggestion was to get a compatible scope with the new hand remote. Are they kidding??!! A bug in their software for the hand remote required it to be replace and now they are saying I need a compatible scope. Yikes!! What a nice marketing ploy. And by the way, GPS align appears not to be an option any longer - even with a new scope.

So, my options at this point are to use the 3 star alignment process - which is a pain in the butt. I don't have enough open sky to find 3 bright stars, even though they say the alignment process would also work with the planets as well.

This is mostly a gripe session against Celestron - but do you folks have any suggestions on what has worked well for you all?

Thanks,

Jeff

[Lady Fraktor]

Hello and welcome Jeff,
Does your old hand controller say Nexstar or Nexstar+?
I imagine the new one is Nexstar+.
If you have not, you can read about the differences here: https://www.nexstarsite.com/Manuals.htm
A firmware update may correct the solution for you as well.

You can also email Michael Swanson (owner of site) and see if he has any helpful advice.

[Bigzmey]

Welcome to TSS Jeff! Unfortunately, bug like that are fairly common for AltAz GoTo scopes. On my two none-Celestron mounts 3-star alignment does not work, but 2-star does.

[JayTee]

Hi Jeff,
Welcome to TSS.

I found this for you: This telescope preceded Celestron's move towards an upgradeable hand control, AKA Nexstar version 4 for those of you in the know. The ramifications are that the internal GPS cannot accurately set the date, and this cannot be fixed. Your options here are to manually update the year once the GPS readings are taken, or simply switch off the GPS and enter the time, date, and location manually. It should be noted that GPS on a telescope, back then, was always something of a gimmick; we used to tell people it actually stood for "Gimmick for Promoting Sales." This scope is the precursor for the current CPC model scopes of which I have one. I'm sure the optics are excellent and you would like to keep using this scope so hopefully we can iron out your hand controller issues.

I have nearly every hand controller (HC) Celestron makes. I have never seen GPS align as an option to give you a goto alignment. With your current HC, you should have the option for a "3 Star Align", a "2 Star align", a "1 Star align", and a "Solar System align". If none of these work for you, please let us know. Believe it or not, the 2-Star align not the 3-Star align is your more accurate alignment procedure. Also, having an illuminated reticle eyepiece (EP) is very useful in helping you get your best alignment.

Let us know how things go.

Cheers,

[Lady Fraktor]

Actually the Celestron GPS telescopes did have a GPS align feature.
Here is a very brief description from Starizona: https://starizona.com/blogs/tutorials/a ... xtstar-gps