These telescopes work with your phone to show exactly what’s in the air

A few months back, before COVID-19 hit, Celestron sent us two telescopes, the Starsense Explorer DX 130AZ and the Starsense Explorer LT 114AZ to check.

At the same time, I was actually looking to buy one myself, but the price difference made it difficult to figure out what a good starting telescope was for me and my family. Getting a chance to test these two telescopes would at least help me in my decision making.

I took them to the San Francisco shelter and kept them for almost four months. What I did not know at the time, until I actually opened the box and put it together, was that these Celestron telescopes used your phone to help you find objects in the night sky.

The technology behind using your phone is Celestron’s Starsense technology. It’s basically an app that uses your phone’s camera to scan the night sky and then sends the scans back to Celestron’s database. It was very useful, especially for a beginner like me, who had no idea what I was looking for or even saw.

This is per se not a new technology, in fact there are several apps that give you real-time information of the night sky, but these are the first telescopes that are built to actually connect your phones with them pair. Once the Starsense app is paired with the telescope, it lists objects that were visible in the night sky that particular evening and leads you to the object.

It helped to have these telescopes with me, especially this summer because there were so many things to look at and it really helped me find the type of telescope I was looking for. I also found that I had become more frequent and found objects and at least knew what to look for. In fact, I looked forward to nights where I knew something was visible and would be out for hours.

Most importantly, however, the Starsense app was a must because of the simple fact that it not only tells you what is visible that evening, but also leads you and the telescope to the object.