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Has anyone had experience or used one of these? They look very useful for outreach but I wonder how easily inexperienced people find them in use?
I haven’t come across any negative criticism so far apart from a bit of coma. I hear that there is an updated version soon to be available.
Any information much appreciated.
Thanks,
David
Norman Lockyer ObservatoryI have been using one for a few months and find it quite a novelty – it is quite big, about the size of a 31mm Nagler, and with the cooling fan running quite noisy. When using it as an eyepiece you are left in no doubt that you are looking at a screen – albeit a very high quality one, and there is as you say coma towards the edges of the field of view – so eye placement is quite critical, and eye relied is not great. The best description of the view I could come up with is that it is like that produced by a SeeStar50 but one on a medium to high dose of steroids. Of course you can switch it around form one scope to another, and I have used it on 72mm, 100mm 130mm and 140mm apo’s and it performs well, all on a driven Alt-Az mount which the software copes with well. So on M51 for example you get a very respectable image of the spiral structure, dust lanes, H2 regions within 2-3 minutes, and all in garish colour (though you can also view in mono). Beyond a few minutes the there is little improvement in the image – but if you are interested in outreach this should not be a problem. You can share the view on other devices such as smartphones and tablets, which is another plus for outreach.
I would imagine experienced deep sky imagers would not get a lot out of this device – and there will be equally or more competent setups available at a much lower cost, but if you are not an imager (which I am not – far too complicated!) or lazy (which I am) it is a good route in to the EAA field, and for showing novices things you would need a very large instrument to reveal in less detail.
Many thanks Barry, that’s a useful review. One problem we have here is that on many occasions we have to cope with cloudy skies but children always ask to look through the big telescope! They all climb the steps in turn only to look at the underside of grey clouds! Are you able to show stored images through the eyepiece of previous shots taken through the smarteye, so at least they get to see something? That would seem to be more engaging than just looking at a computer screen.
Thanks
DavidHi David, Yes I think you can download the images to a tablet or smartphone, though I have not really explored that much myself. The images captured on the screen direct from the SE are quite respectable for casual viewing, though obviously not up to the standards a proper imager might expect. You can apparently save all the frames and stack/process them as you would a normal imaging run using a camera if you wanted to, but again I have not done that myself. You do not have the facility with the SE as you do with the SeeStars to apply an AI Denoise to the captures straight from the device – so the images could be viewed a bit noisy, but for outreach I would imagine they would be more than adequate.
I remember making something similar to this about 20 years ago using a video camera viewfinder (a tiny Cathode ray tube)
http://www.threehillsobservatory.co.uk/astro/UC15_viewfinder.htm
to use on the scope with my long exposure modified video camera
http://www.threehillsobservatory.co.uk/astro/1004xcam1.htmWhen you compare with what you get with smart scopes these days and the cost of displays like in VR headsets for example it does seem rather expensive though. If they are popular enough, I can imagine someone undercutting them substantially.
There is a cheaper alternative for those going down this particular Rabbit Hole……….
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