Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

Easy to use like soft touch buttons.
Mine is used both hand held or mounted on scope with homemade mount.
Works without battery shields in place enabling
quick change of rechargeable batteries a must.
Works fairly well in locate mode.
Some errors in Identify mode finds object a couple of degrees left of actual position however I can compensate for this.

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

An excelent device for astronomy. Easy and fun

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

I own planispheres and star maps, but apparently I'm "map challenged" because I can never quite correlate with certainty what I'm seeing in the sky versus what the map shows. So I bought The SkyScout to help me bridge that gap. I also wanted it to do something outside when the weather or "seeing" isn't really good. It does exactly what I hoped it would. I'm learning the sky and I can use it on nights that are too windy for telescope setup. Two downsides: 1) It eats batteries at a stellar rate; 2) If you're viewing from dark/good skies (as I am), it might not be completely accurate because it's reading the brightest star in the viewfinder and not necessarily the lesser stars. Still, it gets you in the ballpark and it's worth the price. Makes learning fun.

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

I use the product in my boat to have informations about stars.
The great thing is thw use facility
The negative things are related to the time necessary to identify the position

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

The SkyScout works exactly as advertised. It will quickly identify and/or find any celestial object. The GPS is not as sensitive as my iPhone or Garmin GPS's. It takes a while to lock on and does not remember your last position to speed things up. It is very sensitive to magnetic interference from any nearby metal, etc. Other than that, it is great.

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

[...] Straight out of the box the product is easy to setup. Ensure that you use the battery shields that are included in the box, as this will prevent problems with battery magnetic interference. Once outside and turned on, it checks in with GPS and is ready to use in only a couple of minutes. The low level light from the device does not interfere with what you see and is really straight forward to use. Simply point at the celestial object and with the click of a button, the name of the object will appear. Using the side buttons you can obtain audio information about that object - Its really is great. You have to be careful about which audio output you use. If you choose a speaker, make sure you get the Celestron speaker designed for this product as it will not interfere with the GPS. If your speaker interfere's a little magnet will appear on the LED screen to tell you that the device is detecting interference. I am really happy with this purchase and expect to have many happy nights exploring the sky over the coming summer months. I would highly recommend this product to any budding astronomer or even those of you just interested in knowing what you are looking at in the sky at night.

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

I use it purely for fun. I have always been fascinated by astronomy, but often have trouble identifying or finding stars. This takes the mystery out of it. As is to be expected, it is best used in a very dark environment, without city lights. On a couple of occasions, it identified different stars by the same name. Great for boat navigational purposes as well.

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

I purchased this with great expectations after reading a few old reviews.

Positives: It basically does what it's supposed to it. It was able to identify a few stars that I sighted in, presumably correctly.

Negatives: 1) Sleeves must be installed over the two AA batteries, apparently to shield them. It was a very tight fit over some NiMH rechargeables. 2) Freshly charged NiMH batteries already displayed as half battery remaining. 3) Fresh alkalines displayed as significantly used after only 20 minutes. 4) It initially was unable to acquire a GPS fix while in my small backyard with open sky, where other [Garmin] GPS units have no problem. It finally acquired a fix when I stood in the middle of the street for a few mintues. 4) While it does display GPS lat/long, this is only to the nearest degree. 5) For people over 40 who use reading glasses, it was very difficult to focus on the two non-optical lighted concentric circles that assisted sighting in stars while still seeing the star. 6) The lighting on the concentric circles was completely uneven, being very bright in the upper left and almost nothing in the lower right; made sighting that much more difficult. 7) There are no 64-bit Windows 7 USB drivers as of 8/2/10. 8)It only had information on about half of the clearly seen (in the city!) stars making up Scorpius.

I got the sense of a product which might have been awesome when it was first released a number of years ago, but Celestron apparently hasn't invested much into improving the product after they acquired the company which originally produced it. (The newest drivers were dated 2006.) My brother has an Android phone with software that identifies astronomical objects and full constellations when held up against the sky; much more fun to use.

Returned.

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

Hi-I bought my SkyScout, (and 2 media cards seperately)as you offered them at a lower price AND that they were new. When I recieved the items they were in perfect condition and I immediatly used the SkyScout up in Flagstaff. I'm so happy I ordered and would certainly do it again when the need arises.Thank you-Gregg [@]

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

Heavy current consumption which will waste the batteries in a couple of hours. Use re-chargeable batteries but be prepared to have spare re-charged batteries as these will not last for a long.
No option to disable the auto shutdown which makes it very frustating to re-enter position, date & time each time it shuts down.
Poor GPS aquisition. You must be under clear skies and even then it takes a long time.
Hard to read the red back lit display.

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

I've been a stargazer for 25 years and seen a lot of interesting and impressive equipment come down the pike in that time, but I was skeptical when I first read about the SkyScout. Having finally gotten one and used it a few times I'm still amazed at what it can do, and so is everyone else I've shown it to. It is a well engineered and manufactured device that does just what it is supposed to. I would think that it would be great fun for a person just beginning to explore their interest in the night sky, since they can point it at anything they see and find out what they are looking at. For myself, it is a quick and easy way to find the names of stars that I have not yet learned, and to find a list of satisfying objects to point my telescopes at on any given night. I highly recommend it.

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

my friend is a very avid star gazer. i thought id really invest in a nice birthday present for her. its very hard to load any sattelites, then when or if you do, you go thru batteries in about 2 days, and if your anywhere near metal, car, truck etc the unit doesnt work.

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

Very Cool, Very Easy to use, lots of fun to use in the backyard, Also comes in handy when using a telescope so you can find objects easier.

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

This is a great instrument for the new astronomer. I can mount it along side my camera or on top of my telescope and find almost any planet or star I want to photograph or observe. The GPS locator worked correctly every time and the text or vocal descriptions are very good.

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

Just love to know which heavenly bodies are which, so this makes it easy.
Very easy to use, however it doesn't like being around magnetic devices or lots of metal. Unfortunatly, I use mine mostly out at sea on an oil rig,lots of metal, but it still seams very accurate. LJ

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

Wonderful -- easy to use. Do use lithium batteries in it -- so you don't have to change batteries all that often. For amateurs, you can really learn a lot about the sky with this. It's fun. BH had the best price -- so go ahead and compare. [...]

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

My curiosity about the stars has never been easily satisfied until the SkyScout. It's a database of stars, planets, constellations and all one might want to find out about the universe without having to spend hours studying. [...] It is easy to use, very intuitive. Though one can listen to its narration I mostly read the descriptions. My 12 year old son loves it. It has made my binocular and telescope viewing more enjoyable as I now know what I am looking at.

Comments about Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium:

It makes going outside at night lot of fun. Easy to use and very accurate.
There are two glaring problems. The information screen in very hard to read at night and I've had to replace the batteries every time I've gone to use it.