93969 SkySync GPS Accessory, Black

I'm giving this max stars. It's an addition I failed to purchase awhile back. But I'll now say your telescope is going to like it and function even better in alignment procedure. Speeds things up and near automatic to use. Gets its power from the aux port. Mine is the compact 4SE and worked great this evening. Sky's were more than hazy. Used an extra wide Meade 40MM eyepiece. Easily handles the larger Deep Sky. Sky so hazy even had difficulty centering the brighter stars in the finder! You have to go to the menu and find GPS, then turn it on! I was so slow fumbling in the dark gave enough minutes for the GPS to acquire satellites. This unit also puts in the correct time, easy to make a mistake here on the first outings. Area for Hercules Cluster wouldn't show due to poor sky's but area for andromeda our nearest neighbor came right in just off center of the low power eyepiece. Sizeable smudge. Polaris refused to show in finder so elected other bright stars on my auto two star alignment. Some areas of the sky did release some nice compact clusters, obvious in the view. Did after alignment check Polaris and shown well now in the eyepiece, but such poor sky conditions refused to show the dim companion fun to see even in a small scope. My Clave failed tho added contrast. Bad night but thanks to the GPS addition life was much easier and for some reason my Celestron behaves better with its use. I strongly suggest you add this one to speed up the alignment process. Likely find things are now a lot easier.

You can’t see it on my telescope, but the picture is intended just to show that I take my telescope travel seriously! This GPS unit is a HUGE timesaver during setup and helps me get hyper-accurate positioning for tracking and Astro photography. The time saving alone makes this unit well worth the money. It’s small and fits out of the way, and I have mine secured to the mount. Now that I’ve had this GPS unit, I’d never want to be without it.

It works great. I needed this to make set up faster.

An excellent product from Celestron. Well received and in time via DHL.

I've been a serious penny pincher lately and it tore me apart to spend so much on a GPS, especially when I can obtain coordinates from my phone. But, truth of the matter is, the places I bring my scope to hardly ever have service, and even when I can get the coordinates myself, they always seem a tad bit off. I've never been able to get even a decent alignment with my Celestron NexStar 6 SE. I'm a complete and absolute beginner and no matter what I do, I've just never been able to get it. Until I bought this. The wonderful thing about the SkySync is that it works everywhere, and everywhere is exactly where I bring my scope. I bought it to bring to different dark parks, and across the country when I go. It is a beautiful thing to just be able to turn the scope on, select Daylight Savings, align it with 3 totally random bright stars, and have it work so incredibly flawlessly. I bought this scope so I could see some amazing things, and with the SkySync, I can see everything so easily because it gives my scope such accurate, on point data. It's even a lifesaver when it comes to time input- I can't possibly set it to the exact second like this can. Everything has to be pretty much perfect for me to be able to see deep sky objects, especially because they are often hard to spot as it is. The first night I brought my scope out with SkySync, to a dark park, we got it perfectly aligned on the first try and we were able to see everything. Alignment took about 2 minutes and we were able to select items from the menu on our scope- it was able to perfectly point to every single one. I still can't get over it. It was so easy and we were able to see it all. It's very small, light and durable too. My only complaint, aside from the price, is the location that it's supposed to sit- it fastenes onto the tripod leg. I often have to unfasten it and place it on the base platform of the tube of the scope because, as my scope moves and turns around, the SkySync cord wraps around it! So, yes, it's expensive and a bit overpriced, yes, it really does just input the coordinates and time, yes, you do still have to align it, but it really makes a world of difference. Especially if your a beginner like me, that doesn't want to deal with the hassle, and the guessing, and the frustration. It's worth it and makes the entire experience even more enjoyable. I always use the three star align, the others are a little too difficult for me- like I said, I'm a beginner. I just want to set my scope up and go, and with the SkySync, I can, and I can see the most incredible things.

The missing link to the automatic telescope alignment procedure. Can be finicky. Should have 3 satellites to get a location fix. A clear sky to view the satellites. And a way to get the information to the software directly. Usually plugs into the mount, as does the WiFi module. Then everything goes to the computer and turns into controls to locate the telescope and the objects desired! I think you can plug directly into the mount from the computer, an Ethernet connection. You still have a network but it’s a local area network, LAN. Then the computer only has to connect to the world network if your software is on the world network. If you have the software then everything is right there on your computer. Storage space is a concern. But you can now get 1-5 TB of RAM on a USB C flash drive! Yet HDR video can be 1GB per 30 sec. Still, that’s a lot of frames to stack up. And Fine tune focus. Very easy to use. Weights nothing. Not sure about battery life or compatibility with other telescopes other than Celestron. Quality is built well. I hope the electronics inside is built to take the outside.

Got this, as at times need a manual backup when I lose wifi using star sense. It will say when disconnecting connection failed and wont reconnect, so have to resort to using my starsense handcontroller. I hate inputting time, etc into hand controller and like everything on auto. This works great and puts the time and date correctly, when I know it's entered, hit auto align and then its all automatic. While it works well, its not cheap, but for me the expense is worth not having to each time manually having to input time, etc on Handcontroller.

This makes the set up much easier. It automatically adds the date and time and provides you with gps coordinates which you then punch in.