The smart telescope choice - Vaonis Vespera Pro or Uni Stellar Odyssey?

[NeutronNick]

Hi,

In a few months I plan to invest in a smart telescope. Sure, they do not have the resolving power or optics of the more traditional scopes that I used to have (i.e. Meade, Celestron) but I want something that I can take easily with me, setup and go and still produce 
(to me at least) good DSO images. Solar System planets are not that much of an interest to me (the Vaonis I understand can't resolve them much anyway).

I know its still early and they have not been released but what do members this of the Vaonis Vespera Pro  and the Unisteller Odyssey smart scopes? At least on paper?

Do members have the original Vaonis Vespera?

I'm leaning towards the Vespera Pro as it has a higher megapixel count of 12MB I think (so I can crop in a bit) and I like the Mosaic imaging taking plus I like its portable design, more so that the Odyssey which has a full height tripod.

 

Thanks for any feedback,

 

Nick 😀

[Cosmic Geoff]

There are a number of smart telescopes on the market now, ranging from ZWO's Seestar S50, which appears to be wildly outselling all the others, to Celestron's £4000 6 inch aperture offering.  What attracts you to the two you have mentioned?

What are you expecting a smart scope to do for you?

[NeutronNick]

45 minutes ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

There are a number of smart telescopes on the market now, ranging from ZWO's Seestar S50, which appears to be wildly outselling all the others, to Celestron's £4000 6 inch aperture offering.  What attracts you to the two you have mentioned?

What are you expecting a smart scope to do for you?

Thanks for the reply.

Mainly DSO's, galaxies, variable and binary stars. 

My academic and industrial background is in high energy physics, nuclear enginering  and cosmology. I've never owned a telescope in the past funny enough as working around the world, having the hassle of setting it up etc and of course not being

that transportable always put me off. Back then I also lived in a highly light polluted environment.

I was not that interested in 'visual' astronomy as such, more imaging the objects and examining the results later (as per my past career involved). Smart scopes fill in all my tick boxes:

1. Highly portable for a hike, quick transport in the car or air

2. Built in imaging (not bothered at visual eye piece), I use Lightroom and Photoshop for my Leica photography so experienced in post processing on the Mac

3. Quick setup with WiFi connection to a device allowing me to target objects

4. Low weight, lugging heavy kit even into the garden is a negative for me

....

 

I have a budget of around £2,500 which covers these new French smart scopes.  I see Celestron have or will soon launch the Origin scope, however again the put off for me is they overall weight, size
although Celestron have an illustrious history in making fine instruments. I also understand its a F2 or something, whereby the French scopes are around F4-5, but to me this is really not an issue.

 

Thanks

 

Nick

 

 

[Elp]

The Seestar will do all that at a far lower cost, its also much smaller and easier to setup. Have a look at the Seestar threads.

You'd have to compare them spec for spec, for 2.5K you could even put together a decent travel AP rig which will outperform the lot.

[NeutronNick]

1 minute ago, Elp said:

The Seestar will do all that at a far lower cost, its also much smaller and easier to setup. Have a look at the Seestar threads.

You'd have to compare them spec for spec, for 2.5K you could even put together a decent travel AP rig which will outperform the lot.

Thanks for the reply. See I did think of a rig however I just like the idea of a small (ish) design smart scope that I can buy without having to add this/that, my only accessory would be
a white light solar filter for daytime use.

I really like the idea of the Vespera Pro coming out this year with I think around 12 megapixels and is a back side sensor so potentially lower noise. The pixel count would mean I could crop in more
without too much loss of overall detail.

[Elp]

One of the main issues with these scopes is that they're all alt az mounts, even celestrons new one coming out. This means they're all limited in how long per sub they can expose for before star trailing occurs. As a result their stacks contain multiple read noise signal as per sub exposure, if they were equatorial you'd get far less noise as technically there wouldn't be a limit of how long you could expose for per sub so less read noise in the stack.

Understand your want for something simple, to be honest I setup my camera one yesterday and it was no hassle at all other than the time taken to polar align (less than ten minutes), once you get used to it it's clockwork simple.

But I see the appeal for these smart ones. You'd have to check the framing on certain targets, use Telescopius website with the telescope simulator and input the focal length and camera sensor size. This for me is what influences an optics or camera decision, the targets you can frame without having to mosaic.

Edited January 27 by Elp

[NeutronNick]

6 minutes ago, Elp said:

One of the main issues with these scopes is that they're all alt az mounts, even celestrons new one coming out. This means they're all limited in how long per sub they can expose for before star trailing occurs. As a result their stacks contain multiple read noise signal as per sub exposure, if they were equatorial you'd get far less noise as technically there wouldn't be a limit of how long you could expose for per sub so less read noise in the stack.

Understand your want for something simple, to be honest I setup my camera one yesterday and it was no hassle at all other than the time taken to polar align (less than ten minutes), once you get used to it it's clockwork simple.

But I see the appeal for these smart ones. You'd have to check the framing on certain targets, use Telescopius website with the telescope simulator and input the focal length and camera sensor size. This for me is what influences an optics or camera decision, the targets you can frame without having to mosaic.

Very much appreciated for the post. Yes, I will look at Telescopius as I have not heard of this.

[Cosmic Geoff]

I suggest that you look at the threads on this site and elsewhere to see what the Seestar and other smart scopes achieve in practice.  The Seestar can stack for a surprisingly long time without field rotation becoming an issue.  And one user claims to have figured out how to make it perform in equatorial mode. 

For smart scopes in general, the main thing to look at is the achieved field of view.  The Seestar, for instance, uses a small sensor, so the field of view is smaller than it potentially could be (but the Moon still fits in the FOV).  If you want planetary imaging, look elsewhere, as you will only get impressive planetary images with a long focal length and large aperture.

Note that the less popular models may have software & firmware that is not as polished as with some others. Read the reviews.

Some of the smartscopes seem quite expensive.  The test here is how much would it cost to put together a rig with the same performance, using separately bought parts (i.e a traditional imaging rig).   Some smartscopes might fail this test, but  the Seestar can only be beaten by spending far more than its £550 asking price, which is why it has proved so popular.