CES 2013: Team Celestron Showcases New Products (and Giant Ants!)

Team Celestron kicked off 2013 with what has now become an annual tradition—exhibiting at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada. This year’s show was especially exciting for us, with the debut of 50 brand new products.

Undoubtedly, our star product this year was the StarSense Accessory. After winning the CES Innovations Award in 2011 for our SkyProdigy self-aligning telescopes, Celestron engineers immediately set to work developing the same self-aligning technology as an accessory. Finally, that dream is a reality with the StarSense Accessory, which consists of a camera attachment and specialized StarSense hand controller. We showed this small-but-mighty accessory on our CGEM 1100 HD telescope. It’s available for preorder now, and begins shipping this Spring.

Tech Podcast Network spotlighted the StarSense Accessory in their live coverage from CES. (Check out the interview here. It’s in the Day 2, Hour 6 segment, about 13 minutes in.)

“Literally on your first night out, you’re going to be able to locate some of the most interesting things in the night sky, without having any prior knowledge,” Product Manager Bryan Cogdell explained. “It’s going to take all the work out for you, so it just leaves the fun part of the experience—using the telescope under the stars.”

“This is what I love about Celestron products,” said Daniel Lewis of Tech Podcast Network. “You’re not stuck with something. You might spend $800 on a telescope, and then you can modify it, you can upgrade just a little part of it, you can add on these extra parts.”

The newcomer to our telescope lineup, Advanced VX, also drew lots of attention at the Celestron booth. Advanced VX is an excellent scope for beginner to intermediate astroimagers. With imaging on the rise, there’s already been lots of excitement surrounding this new product. At CES, we displayed the Advanced VX mount with a 9.25” Schmidt-Cassegrain optical tube, but it’s available in many configurations, including the Advanced VX 8-inch EdgeHD. Advanced VX begins shipping in March.

Some might have been surprised to see giant ants crawling in our booth! We hooked up our Deluxe Handheld Digital Microscope to a huge flat-screen TV and pointed it in a gel colony ant farm! The ants put on a great show, and we saw them in stunning detail thanks to the microscope. Product Manager Ron Peters also unveiled 3 new digital microscopes, and the new TrekGuide Lite digital compass.

Sport Optics Product Manager Josh Lazenby was on hand to introduce more than a dozen new binoculars. The new Cavalry series stood out, with a military-inspired look and built-in gadgets like a digital compass and GPS. Another eye-catching binocular was the ultra-compact, reverse porro Cypress series.

Visitors to the booth were amazed when they peered through the new TrailSeeker binoculars. This new line was designed for advanced bird watchers and includes high-end features like phase and dielectric coatings. Our reinvented Regal M2 spotting scope allowed guests to spy into nearby booths!

With so many new products to display, the only challenge we faced at CES was packing everything up at the end of the show. As much fun as we had, we’re already hard at work preparing the next generation of Celestron products for 2014!

-Andrea Tabor
Social Media Coordinator