[rrussell1962]

A couple of points to add to the replies above.

The SE mount does not have a clutch on the Az axis, the drive engages after the first alignment point (I think) and remains engaged thereafter.

The Alt axis has a slip clutch, the only function of which is to slip to avoid damaging the Alt motor and gearbox assembly if the movement in Altitude is obstructed (for example the back of the diagonal hitting the base). As noted above, alignment will be lost if you move the scope manually in altitude.

So, no you cannot manually move the telescope to an object. However you can enter RA and Dec co-ordinates into the handset and use a GOTO, in which case the telescope will happily track on the co-ordinates selected.

I do not know whether you can use the Up/Down Left/Right buttons to move the telescope and maintain accurate tracking on the object you have steered to, it may be that the telescope still "thinks" it is pointed at the last object that a GOTO was selected for. I have never tried that with my Nexstar 8SE - if you do please let me know the result.

You could also use the direction buttons to manually slew to an object, then use the IDENTIFY function to identify the object, press GOTO (the telescope should not move much if you have correctly ID'd the object) and the tracking should now be fine.