Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium
by Celestron
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium
Customer Review: A great tool for those who need an astronomy mentor on demand
Summary: 5 Stars
Back at the end of September, I splurged and picked up a Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium through Amazon.
This gadget is amazing! Once its GPS acquires your position it can either direct you to pretty much any celestial body you are interested in or you can point it at anything you see in the sky and it will tell you what it is and provide you with all manner of interesting info about it such as magnitude, composition, distance even lore concerning the object. For many items you can even listen to the description through the provided ear buds.
I had an initial issue where the unit simply would not acquire the satellites necessary to allow for a GPS fix. But updating the unit's firmware (with the tool on the included CD) corrected this issue and allowed for rapid GPS position acquisition from then on.
Note that this is not a magnifying tool. The lens on it is strictly for directing you to an object (via little arrows around the circumference of the lens) or to allow you to center an object and then press the "Identify" button.
I've been using this lately with a pair of Canon 15x50 IS Binoculars that I picked up a few years ago and the two make a terrific team.
The light pollution in my area is such that even the major constellations always seem to be incomplete and I tend to have trouble identifying what should be relatively simple objects. I have used various PDA-based star charts and they've been moderately successful in guiding me. But personal planetarium is like having a seasoned astronomy veteran next to you pointing the way to the objects you're interested in observing.
It even has a "tonight's highlights" feature to help you get rolling.
I'm hoping to try my hand at a "Messier Marathon" in the next couple of weeks.
Customer Review: Discover and Learn about the Celestron Skyscout Personal Planetarium
Summary: 5 Stars
I am excited to present the Celestron Skyscout Personal Planetarium to you! This revolutionary device allows you to point anywhere in the sky, and have the advanced computer inside the gadget identify and explain what stars, planets or other celestial bodies you are looking at. Everyone can use the Skyscout: from the learned scholar to the absolute beginner- it's as easy as looking through binoculars!
The Skyscout makes everything easy: navigation is done by using only a few intuitive buttons, and all information is displayed on the large LCD display. Once you have chosen something to look at, you can choose to learn more about it by reading interesting information from the screen, or listening to the Skyscout's built in narration system. Star gazing with the device is like observing with a seasoned expert, as every question you have is answerable through the vast database built into the Skyscout. Using only one finger, you can learn more about the cosmos than you'd ever imagine!
As a novice astronomer, I enjoy the `guided tour' feature: you sit back and relax and the Skyscout will guide you through the sky above you, just like a planetarium tour. Along the way, the history, science and statistics behind the stars will be explained to you in a manner suitable for any level of scientific expertise. Because I am a student, time is limited, which is why the tour is great: it will last only as long as you want it to, and will definitely get you extra credit in science class! The Celestron Skyscout is a truly amazing astronomy tool: it opens the mysteries of the sky up to everyone because of its intuitive interface and informational database, and requires only a sky and an interest in science. Whether you are an old hand at astronomy or a beginner, the Skyscout has something to offer. [...]
Customer Review: Skyscout Rocks!
Summary: 5 Stars
Recieved my Skyscout just a couple of days ago and so far it is very impressive! Only complaint I have is with the U.S.Postal Service tracking system, it really sucks! Took it out of the box, read over the quick setup guide, installed batteries and went outside to try it out. GPS was up and running in under two minutes. I am an amateur astronomer so the first several targets I tried in the identify mode were those I already knew and was amazed at how dead on it was. Next I tried the locate function and used the Tonight's Highlight's function. The arrow buttons in the view screen easily guided me to each of the targets and once again was spot on. The audio tutorial is fairly basic, but informative and has some interesting facts about each of the targets viewed. The field guide is also fairly basic but has some great features. Just about right for a beggining to intermediate amateur astronomer, not to technical but I learned a lot of cool facts! I have not had the battery problems that I have read about either. I still have about 3/4's battery life left after probably 6-8 hours use on the original set of batteries I installed. This is a wonderful product and would make a really nice gift for anybody interested in astronomy, especially for someone just starting out or maybe a kid that is showing interest! My wife is a college professor and thinks it is an amazing educational tool. I really wish that I had a Skyscout when I was a kid! Now that I know it works as well as it does I am ordering the Skyscout Connect to use with my telescope. With the features it has and it's ease of use I believe it will take my astronomy experience to a new level. All in all I am very very happy with it's performance and really look forward to learning with it!Customer Review: It's Amazing!
Summary: 5 Stars
The idea is genius - marry a GPS with an accelerometer and create a device that can tell you exactly what star it is pointing at, or direct you to any visible star. And it pretty much works as advertised. We've used ours on several nights so far, and everyone in our extended family has wanted a turn spotting different stars.
The info on the major stars is plentiful. The audio is a nice idea, but it just reads the same information that is on the text display. Sighting can be a little tricky through the plastic tube, but even faint stars took no more than two or three tries to spot.
The precision is good, but not great. If you point to Orion's belt, it's going to list all three stars. You'll have to read the descriptions to determine whether you are interested in the eastern-most, western-most, or middle star. Did you know that the middle star of Orion's belt, Alnilam, is 50% farther away than the other two? Or that Alnitak, the leftmost star in the belt, is primarily a hot blue supergiant star that is 6 million years old and has already begun to die? Those are the kinds of things SkyScout will tell you. Fun stuff.
It is very sensitive to metal - you can't use rechargeable batteries, and it comes with special tubes to you have to put the batteries in. We couldn't use it standing next to a big swing set, for instance. A little symbol pops up on the video screen and it refuses to work.
The software is PC only. No Mac version in the works as of now. We haven't tried running the updater in parallels or VMWare yet. Updates seem fairly rare anyway.
It's a little pricey, but all in all, I really can't find too many negatives about it. It's amazing.
Customer Review: Amazing
Summary: 5 Stars
I received this as a gift. I had seen it previously and was slightly skeptical about whether it could deliver as promised or be as accurate as you would need it to be. Anyway, took it out of the box and read the three pages or so of quick start up instructions. took it outside and it had a little trouble getting a gps link. I moved farther away from the house though and it synched properly. So, I pointed it up to a star, looked through the eyepiece and pressed the button and *bang*. It told me what it was. Wondering about its accuracy, I pointed it to another star nearby to see if it would give me the same name and lo it gave me a different name (the proper name). I plugged in the headphones and started listening to the audio commentary about the stars I was selecting. It was so cool. All these stars that I had no idea which ones they were, just press a button and it was telling me. It is really accurate, much more so than I even hoped. Pointing at stars and clicking is one way to use it, but you can also use the locate function and select an object, and then follow the arrows in the eyepiece until you zero in on it. I sat in my backyard in the freezing cold for about a half hour just selecting all the bright stars in the sky. I still cant believe how well it worked. A few weeks ago (after pointing Venus and Jupiter out to my 3 year old) my son started asking me the names of the stars in the sky and I had no idea, now I can tell him its Procyon, or Rigel...how much fun is that. I learned more about the stars in a half hour than I have in all the rest of my life.