Will this new camera revolotionize the astro photography?

[Corpze]

Will this new camera revloutionize the astro photography?

By the looks of it - it would gick the polemaster a tough competitor, and that is just the beginning!

I browsed the internet and discovered this new camera, but it looks to be quite a work horse.
The company sais it is wokring with "AI", has multi star guiding, can do polar align for you and also plate solve.

I made a video, covering the main features which it is supposed to have.

I need to have my eye on this company in the future

/Daniel
 

 

[bottletopburly]

Not at 890 euros it won’t.

[Corpze]

22 minutes ago, bottletopburly said:

Not at 890 euros it won’t.

Yep, a lot of money, for sure...

But a SX lodestar is 570 Eur and a polemaster 340 Eur plus adapter rings at 45 Eur...
So it depends of what you compare it to i guess...

Still a lot of money though.

*I do had the lodestar X2 myself, a truly kick ass guide camera!

/Daniel

[bottletopburly]

Sharp cap pro is ten pounds and pa accurately, phd2 multi star guides(free) , think a bit if a niche product tbh.

[wimvb]

Most people have some sort of computer (laptop, nuc, raspberry pi) at their mount anyway, and software is cheap or even free. So will it revolutionize ap? Depending where you’re coming from, perhaps. For all of us? No. Because, what if guiding (or platesolving) isn’t just ”push here, dummy"?

I want to see what my system is doing, even if that’s just following a guide graph on screen.

[Shimrod]

29 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Most people have some sort of computer (laptop, nuc, raspberry pi) at their mount anyway, and software is cheap or even free. So will it revolutionize ap? Depending where you’re coming from, perhaps. For all of us? No. Because, what if guiding (or platesolving) isn’t just ”push here, dummy"?

I want to see what my system is doing, even if that’s just following a guide graph on screen.

I'm all for anything that will reduce my set up time - there was a brief discussion of this camera last year. It's expensive, but I have spent a similar amount on starsense, ipolar and standalone guide camera so for someone like me it could make sense. Ideally I would like to avoid taking a laptop out completely but that also needs a standalone imaging camera (that isn't a DSLR).

[KP82]

890 euros, that's like nearly £800.

All these can be done with a rpi 4 + hq camera + astroberry + vnc at about 1/8 of its price. If you really need the fancy mobile app, buy a copy of stellarmate OS at $50.

Edited January 25, 2021 by KP82

[wimvb]

5 hours ago, Shimrod said:

Ideally I would like to avoid taking a laptop out completely but that also needs a standalone imaging camera (that isn't a DSLR).

Or you could invest in a nuc/compute stick/asiair/stellarmate/raspberry pi. If you lose one of these due to dew or rain, it's not the end of the world. They are cheap enough and readily replaced. I went the raspberry pi route a couple of years ago, before asiair or stellarmate, just because I didn't want a laptop outside. It took a while to get it all working, but was totally worth it. It's worth having two, in case one breaks down during a session.

To get back to the camera in the original post, if it works, it is great. But what if things don't work as expected? How easy is troubleshooting? A few years ago, a friend of mine used a SBIG SG-4 standalone autoguider. It really was a one pushbutton solution. But he had no idea just how good or bad his guiding was. It worked ok when he used an 80ed with a large pixel camera on a heq5. When he upgraded to a 1000+ mm fl telescope, he changed to an oag, lodestar and phd2 on an eq6-R. I think that this camera will be a good solution for some of us, but not for everyone. It will depend on levelmof ambition and how well it fits with the rest of one's gear.

[gorann]

Getting a guide camera in a guide scope (or OAG) run by PHD2 to work is one of the easiest parts of astrophotography and I cannot imagine not being able to see the guide curve to know if guding is at least as good as I can get it, and to find out ways to improve it, at least until the next session. Guiding is one of the most critical parts of astrophotography. A gadget like the Staraid Revolution cannot be made for someone striving to make progress in imaging efforts. Having said that I do use and see the advantage of a digital polar scope, like the Polemaster or iPolar, that I have on my mounts. But polar adjustment and guiding are two different things, and you need a constant watch over guiding.