Uncle Rod's Astro Blog

M3 with Intelligent Denoise and cropping...

I don’t mean “where” as in “location.” I know where they are, they are in the backyards of a lot of imagers old and new. No, muchachos, I’m a-talking about where I stand with smartscopes and what their manufacturers are up to…

Oh, before I forget—easy for me to do these days—happy new year, y’all! I decided to forego the summing-up of last year I’ve been accustomed to doing as a January AstroBlog entry these many years. Doesn’t seem to be much point to it anymore. If you are curious as to what your Old Uncle was up to in ’24 (for some unfathomable reason), just cruise through 12 monthly installments. Easy enough to do. Ain’t like the olden days when there was a new article here every fricking week.

Anyhoo, this will be a fairly short one…maybe…y’all know how Unk do run on. Mainly because a lot went on at Chaos Manor South the previous week. Beginning with Winter Storm Enzo, which brought Possum Swamp more snow than we’ve seen since that hallowed, long-ago year of 1973. Then there was (amateur radio) Winter Field Day, which I was determined to participate in (and not from home) despite the cold. Finally, I had assignments from two astronomy magazines to get out the door. Be that as it may be… following the little old AstroBlog’s renaissance, I swore to get an article up every month, so here one is…

Unk

M33 stacked and processed manually.

Moi? One of those above-mentioned assignments was a Sky & Telescope Test Report on the ZWO SeeStar S30 smartscope. What did I think? I thought—well, you’ll have to wait for an upcoming issue of Sky & Telescope to find out exactly what I thought. But I will say this: the tiny 30mm APO amazed me. How? It allowed me to (easily) take images of legendarily faint nebulae from my backyard. Ones I didn’t think were doable from Chaos Manor South. Objects like the Heart and Soul Nebulae, The California Nebula, The Flaming Star Nebula, and the Horsehead. Scary dim ones like that. All fell before the S30 as dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly.

What else was notable about my time testing the S30? It showed me this scope (and the S50) are capable of a bit more than I thought they were. I am lazy these latter days, but I thought I should at least take a shot at downloading the fits subframes from the telescope and stacking and processing them manually with Siril (the free image stacking/processing program). That process will be the subject of a future blog post but let me say even for your bumbling old Uncle it wasn’t that difficult and hinted at what the S50 and S30 are capable of in skilled hands.

What didn’t I have time to do? Between the need to get those articles done, and the storm, I haven’t been able to get my “new” Unistellar Equinox back under the stars. Believe you me, that is Unk’s number one (astronomy) priority for the coming month.

ZWO

Is ZWO the king of smartscopes? Well, maybe in a way. Their two units, the S50 and S30, are inexpensive and are in the hands of a lot of amateur astronomers, old and new. Their app is also full featured and capable. Frankly, the company had a leg up thanks to years of work on their ASIAIR, which is a Wi-Fi-enabled widget that can turn your conventional telescope and goto mount and camera into something like a smartscope. Applying this technology to the SeeStars has made the little smartscopes nearly impossible to beat for their prices and ensures they really punch above their weight class. The company also continues to update their app/features at a nearly dizzying rate.

So, what’s the latest with the ZWO? A lot of folks are speculating about a “better” SeeStar. Maybe one with more aperture, say 80mm, yeah, an S80. Bigger chip. Built-in wedge for equatorial mode. I wouldn’t be too surprised to see some/all of that happen. But… Size doesn’t scale linearly with aperture, alas, as somebody who’s only gone up a mere 2 inches of aperture from 10-inches to 12-inches sure can tell you. And neither does price, my friends.

20mm more aperture makes the S50 considerably larger and heavier than the S30. Goin’ another 30mm larger than the S50 will do the same—on steroids. The result will be noticeably less portable and quite a bit more expensive. I would be surprised if ZWO could bring in an 80mm f/5 for 1000 US$ and keep the quality comparable to the 30/50. Going to a good 80mm APO objective will eat a lot of money all by its little self. Still, could happen. Probably will. However, the S30 is still new, and I don’t think ZWO will want to rain on its parade too soon.

What has the company done in addition to releasing Little Sister, the S30? Hoo-boy! They’ve added a feature to their app (same app works with both scopes) some thought was pie-in-the-sky: Mosaic (“Framing”) Mode. The SeeStars can now assemble multiple images into larger ones. The feature is easy to use; you just stretch and rotate the image “frame” in the star atlas. 

And ZWO ain't done yet updating their app yet. Not hardly. Next up according to the company is Equatorial Mode, which will make it possible to tilt the scope over to polar align it. That done, pictures will not suffer from the problems of field rotation inherent in altazimuth scope mounts. Some users have already been able to use EQ mode by tilting the scope over to point at the Celestial Pole and “fooling” the app. An official equatorial mode will make workarounds unnecessary and will also add polar alignment tools. ZWO says this will be in the app’s next update.

Unistellar

Equinox 2

Unistellar divides their five smartscope offerings into two classes, the Expert range and the Odyssey range. The former containing the new Equinox 2 and the Evscope 2 (which possesses an electronic eyepiece). The latter, their Odyssey, Odyssey Pro, and an Odyssey with a red tube and mount. They are all similar, though, with the big difference being the Odysseys have 85mm mirrors while the Experts are equipped with 114mm primaries (all the scopes are reflectors).

The latest? The Equinox 2, which improves on the original with a more advanced, higher resolution imaging chip and improved optics. My take from what little I’ve been able to do with my Equinox 1 so far? They are well-made telescopes, and it’s nice to have more aperture and focal length. The app that controls them is fine. I do wish it featured a Station Mode ala’ ZWO that would allow you to connect the Equinox to your network rather than to your smart device directly. But all in all, works well. Stay tuned for more on Unistellar when I gain more experience with this impressive instrument.

Dwarf Labs

All I know about the Dwarf II and III is what I’ve read on the Internet and seen on YouTube. I’ve yet to get my paws on one of these odd-looking little Smartscopes. That said, I haven’t been overly impressed by what I’ve seen of the Dwarf II’s output. The Dwarf III? That may be a different story. The new scope (Dwarf Labs is taking pre-orders now) appears to produce impressive wide-field images with its 35mm f/4.2 optics.  One big plus is it is EQ Mode ready and includes polar alignment software in its app. The app seems a lot more like ZWO’s take than Unistellar’s, containing a star atlas and other things comparable to what ZWO offers.

Caveats?  If you can believe what you read on the Cloudy Nights BBS, Dwarf Labs has had significant problems producing the Dwarf 3. Including QA problems. At any rate, when I last checked, there’s a 4 – 5 month waiting list.  

Vaonis

The latest from Vaonis, the Hestia, is an inexpensive ($300) smartscope. Or maybe it's not a smartscope or a telescope of any kind. It's a device that attaches to your smartphone and allows limited imaging of the sky. Maybe "advanced telephoto adapter that runs from an app on your phone" is a better description than "telescope." At this time, it is capable of producing decent solar and lunar images. It can image deep sky objects, too, but due to the Hestia's lack of tracking, they are mostly in the "I'm surprised you got anything at all" category. Vaonis says they intend to introduce a tracking mount for the widget in the future. We'll see. 

Celestron

I’ve still haven't used heavy-hitter Celestron’s Origin smartscope. Well, that ain’t quite right. I’ve used pieces and parts. Celestron, you see, was able to put a smartscope together from off-the-shelf/near off-the-shelf components. The mount is based on their time-tested Evolution Wi-Fi enabled mount. The tube is a downsized model of the Rowe-Ackerman astrograph— this model is 6-inches. The camera mounts to the scope via Celestron’s good, old Faststar corrector mounting. The app is based on SkySafari—Celestron has had a long working relationship with the SkySafari folks.

Celestron's Origin.

So, is the sum greater than the parts? Based on what I’ve seen and heard thus far, “yes.” The Origin appears to work well and produce impressive photos. But… Yes, there’s that dadgum “but.” The price, $4000, seems a trifle much for an altazimuth-only (currently) mounting, and a fairly low-resolution 6.7-megapixel camera.

Might Celestron fix some or all of this? Maybe. I haven't heard new smartscope news from them lately. The possibilities are there, however. There’s no reason to think the mount couldn’t be used in equatorial mode with an updated app. The Faststar camera mounting means a more advanced camera could replace the current one or be offered as an option. And the price might be brought down some after Celestron (Synta) earns back development costs.

Me? I am impressed by the Origin’s images…but… Remember, all I’ve seen is pictures of the scope. But… it looks to me as if we are getting into the realm of too-big telescopes, telescopes I am too lazy to use or literally unable to use anymore.

STOP THE PRESSES! The word on the street, the rumor, the scuttlebutt is the next release of the Origin app/firmware will provide support for equatorial mode and the StarSense autoguider.

On the Horizon at Chaos Manor South…

As above, my next goal astro-wise is to get friendly with the Unistellar Evolution. When? When it ain’t so freaking cold. Oh, its warmed up compared to our frigid conditions last week, but—wouldn’t you know it?—the warming trend has brought clouds with it.