Celestron SkyPortal

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1. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Impossible to align. Impossible to align the 5SE telescope with this app. The PC app is much better, this one is garbage

2. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   A piece of garbage and a waste of money!. This system has been the bane of my existence! I’ve never been able to get it to work right. One problem leads directly to another! If I could return it I would! What should be a pleasurable hobby and learning experience has resulted in nothing but frustration! Do not buy this system!

3. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   You send me advertising push notifications, I rate you no stars.. Do better.

4. ★★★★★inaccurate results and incorrect data

   Not helpful. The inaccurate compass feature ruins the app for me.

5. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Incredibly frustrating!. None of the videos Celestron provides show me how to use this app! I have no idea how I’m supposed to use this to align my telescope. I think the iPhone version of the app I have must be faulty because I don’t have any controls on the screen and I don’t know what I’m doing. Please Celestron, put out an educational video that explains step-by-step how to use this app.

6. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Has a major issue!. Discovered that the app has a bug where it does not show any Deep Sky Objects (nebulae, galaxies) on the sky chart. I tried every single option in settings to make them visible but nothing works. You can search for them and then it will center them BUT no luck in getting DSOs to show up in charts. I found a review from 2 years ago complaining about the same thing so not a recent issue so guessing Celestron is not planning on fixing it. I bought the wifi adapter for my 6SE to use this app to find and slew my scope to objects in the sky but without seeing DSOs on sky chart that severely limits it. Too bad. Will be returning the wifi adapter.

7. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Won’t connect. Get telescope for Xmas, follow all instructions yet my scope won’t emit a wifi signal and there’s no directions on how to troubleshoot this so connecting with my phone is impossible.

8. ★★★★★a needed feature is missing

   Annoying advertising push notifications. App works OK with my telescope, but I hate they that they kept sending me promotional push notifications with no option to turn them off other than to turn off all notifications.

9. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Used to be a good app.. I don’t know what they did to it with the last update but now in compass mode the horizon curls up as I point my phone to Zenith and for some unknown reason it’s showing a comet images where there are no known comets. Bad job guys, you ruined a good app!

10. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Same as the Telecsope I bought from them- Dogwater. Bought a 100$ telescope that immediately broke during the setup, and this is the app to accompany that item, so it can't be very good.

11. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Will not connect with recent update. I have a nexstar se 4se, and using the wireless module my scope will not connect or respond to the on screen controls

12. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Scope not responding. The current version connects to scope but, message “scope not responding” in direct access mode. This occurs with iPad Pro and iphone 13pro.

13. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Boring. Booooring

14. ★★★★★crashes, freezes and errors

    Not working. It’s not connecting 😩😩😩

15. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Thought it was good, them it started glitching. App on my ipad or iphone 7 doesnt show any deep sky objects no matter how i tweak the settings. Shows the stars fine but no dsi. Yes i have set the display properly. Want to use it to control scope, but its no use if it wont show dsis.

16. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Immediately Crashes. Doesn’t work at all on either iPad that I own. Worked for years until recently.

17. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Crashes on startup. Why did I spend $100 on a WiFi device that requires an app that just crashes? Because I am a fool. Do not buy the Celestron WiFi device. Their app is required and useless.

18. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Impossible to align.. Impossible to align, impossible to use. Never got it set up to see anything. I’ve tried a dozen times. Can’t find stars in the eyepiece to even start aligning on.

19. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Crashes immediately with iOS 14. Same as other reports, so please fix ASAP!

20. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Cannot open it. My iPad is IOS12.4.9 which is updated version. However, the app has been fixed for iOS 14. And I cannot redo my update. So sad.

21. ★★★★★crashes, freezes and errors

    3.3.4 update is crap. This app used to work fine until my iPad updated to 3.3.4. Now it won't open. I can't even use my Celestron telescope to view the fall skies with the features and convenience that Celestron designed. What a waste of some terrific fall evening weather. I really hope someone is reading these reviews and will fix this soon.

22. ★★★★★crashes, freezes and errors

    Broken!!!. Fix your recent update!!! App no longer loads up on my iPhone!!!

23. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    can not see/search c/2020 f3. I am able to see/search the comet after installation. however, when I open the app again, I can not see or search the comet any more. the list of the brightest comet has been changed, no C/2020 F3! why? how to fix it?

24. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Train wreck. This app is a disaster. I can’t align the telescope to stars. I hit align and it won’t center on the stars. I try to track back to aligned objects and it is way of. It stops halfway to targets. It’s a piece of crap app. I’ll have to just use the telescope pad. Ugh FIX THIS!

25. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    It doesn’t work with 90GT wifi. Almost all 90GT wifi telescope users have a big problem that can’t connect telescope on recent version. In case of previouse version, it didn’t have this issue. It’s very critical problem so plz fix it ASAP.

26. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Junk. Terrible, won’t show any Galaxies or Nebulas

27. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    A software failure due to limited scope. Has drop out connection to my Celestron 1100 CPC.. I ordered the module and assumed it was a problem with it. Sent it back for repair. In the meantime I purchased the Sky Safari module package and also the Sky Safari Pro app from apple App Store. Man did it ever work great!! Just received the repaired Sky Portal module. Still did not work. After reading other similar problems with the Sky Portal app., I must conclude that the app is overpriced at ‘free’. It appears that Celestron’s Sky Portal app is lacking the required software to fit the job required. Do not waste your valuable time on this app folks!!!

28. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    I hate this app. Stupid app took 35 hours to download. Even when I had good internet

29. ★★★★★crashes, freezes and errors

    Freezing up Looses settings lags a lot. In the middle of sky gazing and completely lost control. Frozen up!!!! Fix it!!!

30. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Wow, this is bad!. Something seems terribly wrong with this app. No deep space objects visible at all, despite the menu setting saying otherwise. The deep space objects are there, but you have to enter their names individually in the search menu. Seems to be missing half of the basic features in the free version of Sky Safari. I got this hoping to use it to control by CGX mount. But it’s unlikely this app will be any use for that.