Celestron StarSense Explorer for Android

11 things about Celestron StarSense Explorer

1. Many would-be astronomers become frustrated or lose interest in their manual telescope because they don’t know where to point it to see planets, star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies—the good stuff! StarSense Explorer tells you exactly which celestial objects are currently visible in the night sky and where to move your telescope to place those objects in the telescope’s eyepiece.

2. After a simple 2-step procedure to align the smartphone’s camera with the telescope, the app displays a view of the night sky and shows a bullseye on the screen to represent the telescope’s current pointing position.

3. This one-of-a-kind app uses patent-pending technology in combination with a Celestron StarSense Explorer telescope (sold separately) to analyze star patterns overhead to calculate the telescope’s position in real time with pinpoint accuracy.

4. The process of extracting star pattern data in images to determine a telescope’s current pointing position is called “plate solving.” It is the same method used by professional observatories and orbiting satellites.

5. StarSense Explorer uses image data captured by the smartphone’s camera to determine its pointing position.

6. The StarSense Explorer app is the first app ever developed that uses plate solving to determine the smartphone’s current pointing position.

7. StarSense Explorer’s sky recognition technology has revolutionized the manual telescope by eliminating the confusion common among beginners and enhancing the user experience for even seasoned telescope users.

8. Objects will vary from night to night; you may see planets like Jupiter or Saturn, nebulae like Orion, the Andromeda Galaxy, or other object types.

9. Not sure what to observe? StarSense Explorer automatically generates a list of all the best stars, planets, galaxies, nebulae and more currently visible from your location.

10. To get started, assemble your StarSense Explorer telescope and download the app.

11. The app captures an image of the night sky and then matches the star patterns within the image to its internal database in a process like fingerprint matching or facial recognition.