StarSense Explorer

Celestron

About this app

Unleash the power of your smartphone to take you on a guided tour of the night sky, even if you’ve never used a telescope before.

STARSENSE SKY RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY

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.

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. 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.

THE NIGHT SKY AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

The user-friendly planetarium interface allows you to scan the skies for objects you wish to view. You can also search for objects in the extensive database.

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. Simply select one from the list and off you go!

While you observe, you can access detailed information, images, and audio descriptions for the most popular objects. It’s a great way for the entire family to learn scientific facts, history, mythology, and more, deepening your understanding of the night sky.

EASY AS 1-2-3: DOCK, LAUNCH, OBSERVE

To get started, assemble your StarSense Explorer telescope and download the app. Your telescope includes a unique unlock code to access the full features of the app. Connect your phone to the telescope by placing it into the StarSense dock and launch the app.

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. From here, you can select an object to view by tapping it in the planetarium view or selecting it from the Tonight’s Best observing list. 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.

Once you select an object, the app displays pointing arrows onscreen. These indicate where to move the telescope to find it. Follow the arrows until the bullseye appears centered on target. When the bullseye turns green, the object is visible in the telescope’s lower powered eyepiece.

HOW STARSENSE EXPLORER WORKS

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

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.

The StarSense Explorer app is the first app ever developed that uses plate solving to determine the smartphone’s current pointing position. Other astronomy apps rely on the smartphone’s gyroscopes, accelerometers, and compass to estimate its pointing position. These methods are not accurate enough to place objects within the telescope’s field of view.

StarSense Explorer technology is patent-pending.

COMPATIBILITY

Most smartphones manufactured after 2016 running Android 7.1.2 and higher. Check celestron.com/SSE for detailed Android compatibility information.

StarSense Explorer has localization support for French, Italian, German, and Spanish.

Ratings and reviews

The app is great when you have dark sky's but with sky's with less stars it's hard for the app to track the sky. I use the feature where it tells you the position of the star using a compus and level, but it sucks having to swap apps to so this. If it was added onto the app to help find them it would make the experience much better. You already ask for location information so giving us access to this in the form of the compass and level will be great, and give you the last star you deserve :).

Was gifted the accompanying telescope for the holidays and was super excited to be able to have my first one. Tried to download the app and am pissed because I can't even use the app because it's not "compatible with my device's hardware". Shouldn't have been surprised considering the box has what looks like an iPhone 2 or 3 as the example. It's 2023, no one has a working iPhone that old. The company needs to update their software to allow phones like mine (galaxy a51) to work. Garbage.

So far, SSE is more trouble than it is worth. It can rarely get a fix. It's always saying to move to another part of the sky. When it does seem to get a fix and I try to locate a target it will lose the fix and say to move to another part of the sky, etc. That said, I have gotten it to work on rare occasions. When that happens I am pleased. But that is so rare. Right now (today) I can't use it at all because it says it is "Downloading 10 data files" additional. Except the percentage meter says 0% and it has been so for the last 9 hours. No progress. (I have the smartphone on house WiFi with Speedtest reporting 768Mbps back to my internet provider.) I'm about to get a new smartphone and I have read reviews that say the app has trouble running at all with the latest smartphones.

What's new

Solved issue for Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 8, and Pixel 8 Pro where the device was unable to identify the telescope location
Fixed periodic crash that was happening for some phones.