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I took delivery of a Dwarf 3 yesterday. I opted for the Dwarf as I want an ultra portable setup, and I like the equatorial mode that comes as standard.
I was fortunate to have clear skies last night to try it out. There is a little bit of a learning curve with the App, but I got it easily polar aligned so I could run it in equatorial mode. It only dropped a couple of 15 second frames in 2 hours of observing. I am happy with the results, which are impressive for a 35mm telephoto lens. It also has 3.4mm wide angle lens, very handy for finding targets manually and doing wide field imaging.
Andy
Great to hear this development, Andy. I especially look forward to seeing what sort of photometry you can extract.
I would also be interested to hear how faint you can go with different exposures and therefore whether this Smart Scope, or others, might have value in nova searches (where detections by a amateurs using 135mm lenses and digital cameras have been successful).
I’ve just seen your image and am REALLY impressed. Looking forward to seeing what else you achieve with it. Congrats too.
Andy,
Your image of M42 has captured plenty of subtle details across the nebula and surrounding regions
https://britastro.org/observations/observation.php?id=20250316_121626_297821b7e8358325
Impressive!
I think this model has a 12-bit sensor. I’ve seen deep sky and whole disc solar images taken with another smart ‘scope which has a 10-bit sensor. In a few examples when you enlarge the palm-sized image they lose details in the sunspots, etc. I can’t say if the difference is due to the greater tonal range (12-bit vs 10-bit), aperture, focal length, image scale and/or image compression and processing.
I look forward to seeing solar disc images with your new ‘scope to compare results with other smart ‘scopes.
Alex.
It is impressive what this little scope managed. I will gradually try some harder targets to see how it handles them.
I have added images of the Sun and Moon to the gallery.
https://britastro.org/observations/observation.php?id=20250317_121906_068460f96a587c0d
https://britastro.org/observations/observation.php?id=20250317_122120_ed54a2b52dca88f9
It obviously lacks resolution compared to longer focal lengths and larger apertures, though I think it does a decent job.
I worked out how to copy the FITS files onto my computer. This includes the original raw files, and the stacked image created by the Dwarf. That is a really nice best of both worlds approach. It has a timelapse function, that might be interesting for some variable stars, to avoid taking hundreds of images to process over an extended period. My main aim is to use it for Deep Sky, and variable stars will be an added bonus if it works.
Thanks,
AndyHi Andy,
It is perhaps also interesting for spectroscopy. I see from the specs that the sensor is larger than the one in the SeeStar 30 which means that unlike the Seestars it could potentially be used directly with a Star Analyser recording the full spectrum in one shot (not including the zero order, though that plus the blue end of the spectrum could be captures separately.) The equatorial mode would also avoid the problem of the spectrum fanning out due to field rotation which is seen with the SeeStar. The tiny 2 micron pixels means the image is probably well over sampled which should be good for avoiding artifacts with the colour sensor.
Cheers
RobinThe downside for spectroscopy though would be the built in 430-690nm “astro” filter. Does it also have an unfiltered setting do you know ? (If not, for dedicated astro use an obvious hack would be to remove the terrestrial “VIS” filter like with DSLR)
The dual band OIII/Hbeta +H alpha filter setting could be interesting for wavelength calibration thoughCheers
Robin
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