My new telescope, how I chose my Nexstar 6se

So, i had decided to buy a telescope.  I knew I wanted to be able to find and look at the planets and I love taking pictures (my instagram feed).

So, what do I buy?  There's quite a lot of different types to choose from.  Refractors, newtonians, dobsonians, there's quite a list.

I'm not an expert, but this is how I got to decide what I ended up buying.

I understood the basic idea behind a refractor and a newtonian.  With a refractor, they're a bit like a camera lens, there's a lens at each end.  You're paying for the glass.   If you keep these in the house, you need to leave it a while outside to adjust to the temperature.

A newtonian is open at one end.  They adjust to the temperature changes quicker.  A newtonian is a light collecting device, the wider the better.  It gets its focal length through using mirrors.  You tend to look through the eye piece at the top end of telescope, rather than the opposite end, like you would with a refractor.

Then there are composite telescopes.  These use lenses at each end, and mirrors too.  They tend to be short fat scopes.  Have a look on google for Maksutov & Schmidt Cassegrain for details on how these things work.


I live on the edge of Teesside in north east England.  It's an industrial region with a population of around half a million.  The air is polluted and there's plenty of light pollution too.   We get to see the moon in some very interesting colours thanks to the local industry and air pollution.   But I live on the edge of woodland in this little bubble that feels a million miles away from it all.  I think of it as quite dark at night, but it's not really.

I'm going to need something portable.  Eventually, I'm going to want to pick up my telescope and take it somewhere nice and dark.  I also had to consider where I'm going to store the telescope when I'm not using it.

So, I couldn't get away from one of these short, fat stubby telescopes.

I read a bit about my options, and I kept getting drawn to the Nexstar 4se.  It's small and portable.   The tripod and mount also comes with a wedge, which means that if I do want to get in to astro photography, it'll be more suited.

This was the thing I hadn't realised - even though I'd decided on a computerised telescope, something that could automatically move, and keep track on a planet while the earth turns, there's different solutions to this problem.

An Altazimuth mount has two motors.  One for moving it up and down, another for moving it left and right.  Which is great if all you want to do it look through your telescope.

But, if you want to take pictures of DSO's (deep space objects), you need to keep the exposure open on your camera for quite some time.   Which means you need to keep your scope pinned on the object while the earth moves.  Potentially, the two motors can create a stepped effect, which results in poor pictures.

So, the solution is an equatorial mount.  A mount that's pitched up at the right angle and moves very smoothly.  The wedge that comes with the Nexstar 4se is there to achieve this.

But, I read that the wedge that comes with the 4se is a waste of time.

The Celestron Advanced VX mount was suggested as a decent mount.  But that's about £750, and I'd need optics on top of that.  No way.  Not yet anyway.

I needed to forget about photography.  Maybe photographing the moon and planets and I might get away with a altazi mount for that.  Plus, an Altazimuth mount is much lighter, so more portable.

So, go for a good set of optics and an altazi.

I looked again at the Nexstar 4se, the 5se, the 6se and the 8se.   There's loads online to suggest that if you can find the money for a 6se, you should spend the extra and get the 8se as it collects 78% more light.  Fair point.  But its also over 50% more to buy.   A jump from approx £750 to over £1200.  A bug jump in price.

So I looked at the difference in light collecting ability between the 4se and the 5se.  The 5se is approx 50% better, but it was also another 60% in price too.  It was £419 to £680.

Between the 5se and the 6se, the difference in light was approx 50% again.  The 6se can collect more than twice the light of the 4se, and the price difference between the 5se and 6se?  A reasonable £75, just 11% more.  11% more case, for 50% more light?   And the tripod/mount with the 6se is the same as comes with the 8se, so if I wanted to upgrade in future, then I could.

So, the 6se it was.   A good decision?