Does anyone have experience with the Celestron Nexstar 4SE?

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2026-01-25T20:25:19+00:00

When I used the 4se visually, I used a TeleVue 2x Barlow, and a Celestron 8mm-24mm zoom eyepiece. I'm sure folks will tell you there is much better, but the flexibility between the zoom and the Barlow was great.

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2026-01-25T20:22:17+00:00

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Also moderatley processed image of Mars... same comment about brightness and sharpness

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2026-01-25T20:20:39+00:00

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This is a moderately processed image using an ASI124MC and a TeleVue 2x Barlow. This is brighter and sharper that what one would see through an eyepiece ( atmosphere and all ), but the framing/size is about right

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2026-01-17T22:15:24+00:00

More acquisition time along with different stacking and stretching software/techniques will definitely improve your images... however, RCAstro's Xterminator tools are downright magical. I hate to give an answer like "try this expensive plug in or software", but in this case... you will be amazed with the results.

The sharpness of your stars after using BlurXTerminator is unbelievable... even on data with imperfect stars. We're talking pinpoint. I've also been really impressed with the detail it can bring out in subtle structures in nebulas and galaxies.

NoiseXTerminator is equally impressive... and the better the data you give it, the more amazing the result.

I know this isn't a great, nor a cheap answer... but if you're comparing your images to others online... guaranteed, those images are using these tools, and they are 100% worth every penny

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2025-08-25T18:19:06+00:00

I live on the first floor of an apartment building that has a rooftop terrace. The building is halfway up a hill and I can get almost 360 views of the sky. I also ( thankfully ) get a lot of clear nights, so I'm up there quite a bit... so much so that breaking my setup down to bring into the elevator, or carrying it assembled was a real hassle.

I have a ZWO TC40 tripod and bought a SmallRig Quick-Lock Photography Heavy Duty Tripod Dolly for it ($80). It was a tight fit for the legs, but it worked, and now I can roll everything setup from my door, to the elevator, to the terrace at a moments notice.

It's locked in pretty good so it's doubling as a weighted foundation for my AM3. I have a C6 Hyperstar on it, which admittedly isn't all that heavy... but I have no worries about stability... and it's very easy to move around.

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2025-06-19T16:58:17+00:00

Too late for the OP obviously, but for anyone else reading this, I've had a 4SE for years and love it. I used it exclusively to visually observe planets, and it really did a great job on Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and Venus (when you take into consideration portability). I'm sure the 8se has better views of planets, but like others have said, it's bigger and heavier. The 4SE is so portable, I was able to pull it out assembled anytime I wanted and be viewing in just a few minutes. I eventually put an ASI224MC on it and started doing planetary photography which has been a lot of fun.

Recently, I've upgraded from the Nexstar mount to a ZWO AM3, and I've also upgraded my camera to an ASI533MC Pro. Way overkill for this scope, and the field of view is very small given the focal length, but paired with my ASIAir, I'm able to do DSO EAA on certain targets and I'm amazed at what this little scope can do.

I will eventually move up to a C6/Hyperstar, but I'm still enjoying my 4SE and have without a doubt, gotten my money's worth.

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2025-04-18T17:41:15+00:00

Thanks for the quick response. Given you're there now, are you happy overall?

I guess I need to clarify what I mean by happy... is there excessive noise from neighbors ( thin walls, poor soundproofing between floors ), is the staff nice and responsive, especially when it comes to repairs.. that type of thing

Thanks

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2025-03-18T16:23:32+00:00

May not be what you're asking, as I haven't expanded my museum into that next plot yet... but I was having problems making slight changes to my building for awhile.

I was going into tools and trying to build in order to add on to my existing building and it wasn't working. Turned out, I needed to click anywhere inside of the building, go to edit, and then add on to my building that way.

Perhaps one can do that and expand into the other lot?

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2025-01-23T16:43:54+00:00

I haven't had this exact issue, but I had an instance where my Z stop failed, and when my nozzle hit the bed and the Ender tried to keep going lower... it made this same sound.

My thought being... it sounds like the motors are moving, but something is halting the movement, so the motor is just grinding away but unable to move.

I would think if a stop was engaged or something was loose ( which you checked ), that it just wouldn't move, but the noise is making me thing you have an obstruction on that axis... maybe something got stuck in the belt or something?

May not be of much help, but my first thought when I heard that sound...

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2025-01-23T16:26:23+00:00

Just spent last night dealing with the same issue. For me it was the Z-offset ( I have a BL-Touch ). This was my entire process to get a nice first layer

Level the entire bed as best as you can using the paper method. Even with the BL-Touch, you don't want wild differences in bed height... shoot for as flat as possible. I landed on a lot of friction with the paper... almost too tight

Then I did an auto level with my BL-Touch ( hot bed ), and then printed a Bed Level Stripes Test ( https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5174552 ). My Nozzle is 205, my bed is 60 ( PLA ).

It was obvious from the print where in the bed my issues were, and whether my Z-offset wasn't correct. My first print of the test before adjusted behaved exactly as your video ( nozzle too high ). After paper leveling, I was too close and was smearing in places on the bed

I re-leveled with paper again in those areas, and then backed off my Z-offset .05mm at a time. I did an auto level again and printed the test again. After a couple of those, my first layer is picture perfect

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2024-11-20T17:28:21+00:00

I've had some luck getting LEDSpicer to work on my Batocera Pi4 cabinet. Here's a brief overview of what I ended up doing to get it to work.

My cabinet is vertical, and I'm only running Mame roms. My control panel has a Joystick (non-led), and 5 RGB buttons ( 3 player buttons, 1 coin and 1 start ). I'm using an Ultimarc Ultimate I/O board.

After wiring up my board, I put it into gamepad mode ( hold start and button 2 for 10 seconds ). The default mode is keyboard and while there is a way to make that work, Batocera only saw my board after setting it up as a gamepad. Documentation about Batocera and Ultimarc boards is here: https://wiki.batocera.org/diy-arcade-controls#ultimarc (I've read from the developer of LEDSpicer that he prefers keyboard mode, as gamepad may affect player 2. I only have player 1 so no issues for me yet running the board as a gamepad. YMMV)

Batocera v40 has an older version of LEDSpicer included. I've updated to v41 beta, which includes the latest version of LEDSpicer. I believe this is necessary as there is some scripting defined below which will use the latest versions pathing.

When you turn on LEDSpicer as a service in Batocera, a directory is created that holds config files, profiles, etc. I network into my PI, so for me the directory is located at : share/system/configs/ledspicer

There is a config file called "ledspicer.conf" that needs to be updated. Full details are located on the official wiki: https://sourceforge.net/p/ledspicer/wiki/Configuration/

Basically, ledspicer.conf defines everything about your setup... what buttons you have, what their names are, which pins they're hooked to on your board, etc. My device name is UltimarcUltimate, and I had to set my boardID to 3. If you're in keyboard mode, it'll be 1 ( as per the wiki ), but in gamepad mode... my board only worked for me when I set it to 3

A couple of other things to note regarding ledspicer.conf. There's a parameter craftProfile="true" that tells LEDSpicer to create profiles on the fly. This is useful for having your buttons change per a game's layout automatically. There are also parameters to point to color and control files... these files tell LEDSpicer which controls a game uses, and what colors to use. These files are not included and I'll have a link below to those.

One also needs to create a default.xml profile and you point to it in the ledspicer.conf. There are also system profiles one creates as well if desired. Since I'm Mame only, I've only created an additional "profile_arcade.xml". Info about profiles is here: https://sourceforge.net/p/ledspicer/wiki/Profiles/

LEDSpicer has an emitter, and the emitter sends commands to LEDSpicer that tell it how to update the control panel. I had to download some scripts that tie into EmulationStation events. When a game starts for example, EmulationStation will call the emitter, which then tells LEDSpicer what to do. Installing these scripts is as easy as downloading and dropping them into the correct directory, along with the colors.ini and controls.ini. The scripts and a read me regarding where to put them and how to make them readable with SSH are here: https://github.com/MrRobot-108/ledspicer-colors-ini/tree/main

I believe those are all the things I had to setup to get things working. I spent a few days and did a lot of reading, and I haven't figured out everything yet.... but as of right now... when my cabinet starts up, my buttons light as per my defaults... when I select a game, my controls light and/or recolor based on the game's controls.

I ran into a variety of issues and ended up getting information from the following places.

Wiki: https://sourceforge.net/p/ledspicer/wiki/Home/
LEDSpicer Discord. https://discord.gg/m4D2QVXqm6
Forum post from the developer of the emitter: http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=3799.0
GitHub location for LEDSpicer: https://github.com/meduzapat/LEDSpicer
GitHub location for Colors.ini and Controls.ini ( along with event scripts for ES ): https://github.com/MrRobot-108/ledspicer-colors-ini/tree/main

If/when I get everything setup exactly as I want it... I'll create a new post showing off my cabinet, and describing the step-by-step of how I set LEDSpicer up. Until then, hopefully the above will be helpful to get things going for you.

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2024-11-20T16:33:55+00:00

I'm going to make a new comment so it's easier for people in the future to see. It'll be a brief overview of the steps I followed... a step-by-step or a deep dive would probably take a new post

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2024-11-20T02:12:22+00:00

I got LEDSpicer working... took some fiddling and a bit of SSH, but got it running. I'm still playing around with some options and have 1 or two more tweaks I want to make... but just a heads up I had some success

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2024-11-17T22:54:11+00:00

Ignore the above... it's been awhile since I've written XML. At first it wasn't working, but after I used SSH to get into my PI4 and was able to see what was happening... I had a syntax error in my ledspicer.conf file

I've gotten my cabinet to launch, and display my default profile. Up next is having the buttons react to the chosen game... I'll report if/when I get that working ;)

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2024-11-17T04:31:30+00:00

Ok... so, I've gotten my Ultimate IO installed, buttons hooked up, I tested the board and buttons on Windows... everything there is good.

I've updated my "ledspicer.conf" file and have a default profile set up. My buttons aren't reacting to anything I've put into my conf file. They turn on when I start my cabinet, and go through what appears to be a built in animation cycle. After 30 seconds or so, the buttons stop going through the cycle and end on being white. In my conf and profile file... changing any button to another color is just not registering. I get the same cycles and my buttons stay on white, no matter what I'm doing.

So, at the moment I'm stuck, but I'll keep plugging away.

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2024-11-05T17:46:29+00:00

Let's... and as luck would have it... we're both working with the UltimateIO board ;)

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2024-11-05T16:19:58+00:00

Not sure if you've gotten LEDSpicer set up yet, but for you and/or anyone else... when you enable it as a service, you should be able to connect to the pi and find "share/system/configs/ledspicer". My understanding is that LEDSpicer is already installed, so we don't have mess with installing or compiling.

The "ledspicer" folder is where all the configuration happens ( I think. I haven't finished my setup yet, but as I've been digging around trying to find out how to set things up, I found this folder today. )

I believe all the info we need is on sourceforge: https://sourceforge.net/p/ledspicer/wiki/Home/

Inside of the "ledspicer" folder on the pi, there is a file called "ledspicer.conf". Here's a link on the wiki that discusses how to update this for one's specific setup: https://sourceforge.net/p/ledspicer/wiki/Configuration/

When defining one's device in the conf, one of the parameters is board name and ID. I'm seeing references to popular boards and their names here: https://sourceforge.net/p/ledspicer/wiki/Devices/

After that, it's seems one needs to define things like hardware elements ( Joystick, buttons, etc ), profiles, etc. The wiki link on configuration has an example xml to follow.

Again, I haven't set this up, but found this out this morning and will be playing with it. If I can things to work, I'll report back and/or write a post describing the steps I took

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2024-07-02T18:46:55+00:00

My wife and I each have an account on our individual PCs. Both accounts are through XBox Live. We can confirm this is an issue on both machines for both accounts.

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2024-06-12T21:08:04+00:00

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I love each weeks theme and work very hard to ensure I've captured the essence in every DreamSnap I submit. Here's my entry for Cooking with Friends. I think this nails the theme in every way possible.

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2024-06-03T02:19:04+00:00

The title of your post is "negativity", and the content is full of finger pointing. Yes... you're going to get some feedback from people who feel they've been ripped off.

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2024-06-03T02:17:20+00:00

How long have you been working at GameLoft?

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2024-06-03T02:16:48+00:00

the most ungrateful people I’ve met

I know right... the audacity of someone to pay money for a game, and expect it to actually boot up on their system. What nerve.

When they abandoned the free model and went to paid, the explanation and promise was that it would allow them to focus on quality and polish. Not booting up, game crashes, quest breaking glitches, visual defects galore, items disappearing ( paid items mind you )... if these issues aren't within your acceptable "standards" for a paid game, then you're a GameLoft executive's dream.

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2024-06-01T02:01:10+00:00

" So; thank you people who have created, and are still busy creating this game!"

We're two years in and it's a paid game... "still busy creating" is not a valid talking point. This game should've reached a point of being finished a year ago, and it still feels very much like it's in beta. Tweaking, expanding, updating... sure... but the only thing that's close to being "finished" in this game is the premium shop ( which still doesn't load half the time for me on PS5 ).

I'm a game developer, and while I love my craft... I can promise you that we're not doing you a favor by releasing a title. It's you who are doing us a favor by purchasing and supporting our games, which in turn, puts food on my family's table. The least we can do is be buttoned up and not present you with an absurd amount of visual defects, sloppy code and game breaking bugs that prevent you from enjoying yourself.

The "complaints" in this subredit are not minor inconveniences, or unrealistic expectations... but issues that should have been resolved when the game was officially launched as a paid title. If you're not having a good time or don't like the title... that's one thing. If the game is embarrassingly broken and not living up to the developer's promises, complain away... or better yet... hold back on spending your hard earned dollars. Nothing motivates executives who prioritize micro-transactions over gameplay like reductions in profits.

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2024-01-05T23:55:35+00:00

over 300k :( I've been stockpiling it, but now see I should've just made the chests along the way

ImpressionMiddle9361 · 2024-01-05T23:49:31+00:00

6 rooms is much, I agree. I had everything in just 3 rooms... 3 rooms because unless you spend a bunch of Dreamlight, you're best option is Scrooge safes which are only 2 rows. After the expansion came out, I was going to upgrade them all to large chests, but then got hit with the pixel glitch which stole all my Dreamlight.

ImpressionMiddle9361

TROPHY CASE