For the past year or more, my Celestron CGE-Pro mount was seemingly having a difficult time centering selected deep-sky objects. The motors also did not sound good at times when moving to the selected objects. I also had to perform a factory reset on the settings every few months.

Rather than updating the firm ware for an almost 15 year old hand controller, my son Brad, surprised me with a new Celestron NexStar+. However, I was concerned if it would be compatible with the older mount, but I’m happy to say…it worked perfectly!

I first updated all my site settings using the new hand controller, which is an easy task using my iPhone compass with the time, latitude, and longitude.

Last night, and with a bright moon, I wanted to verify the mount and hand controller in all functions. I began the sequence of the mount start-up. Then the three-star alignment, which after the first star, were all centered in the telescope field-of-view.

The first thing I noticed was the two motors sounded much smoother. I was actually getting concerned the motors might be having problems. I’d read in an article a jerky motion or sound of the motors was a sign that a motor might be going bad. So, I was now feeling really good, but how would the GoTo feature perform when locating deep-sky objects?

My first object was the Andromeda galaxy, and with the sound of both motors, and going in different directions, I anxiously waited for it to stop. I then looked into the eyepiece and the galaxy was perfectly centered! The next object would be planetary nebula M57, far to the west from Andromeda, which would make for a great test. The planetary…like Andromeda was “perfectly centered” in the eyepiece. I then selected about 15 other deep-sky objects, including a few double stars. Everything worked perfectly. I was excited to say the least!

I’m so appreciative to Brad for my new hand controller. Despite not ever using the mount, he always seemed to know much more than me, and all the way from the west coast. 🙂 Electronics and electrical stuff are his thing and occupation...not mine for sure.

The CGE-Pro mount has all brass gears and was the most heavy-duty mount ever made by Celestron, with a 90 pound payload.

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