DwarfLab smart telescopes

[Andy Wilson]

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

• This topic was modified 13 hours, 13 minutes ago by Andy Wilson.

[Jeremy Shears]

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).

[Dawson]

I’ve just seen your image and am REALLY impressed. Looking forward to seeing what else you achieve with it. Congrats too.

[Alex Pratt]

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. They are fine until you enlarge the palm-sized image, then 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.

[Author]

Posts