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Unfortunately no access to the internal SD card (storage capacity 12GB on eVscope 1 and 64GB on eQuinox & eVscope 2) – you upload data to the Unistellar network via Wi-Fi. I think the market is for people who either don’t have the time or technical expertise (let’s face it Astrophotography has a steep learning-curve) and to improve the accessibility of Astronomy & Astrophotography to a wider audience. The on-board computer stacks and processes the frames (dark and background removal, shift-adding and stacking) to produce an improved image in real time. Personally there are times I’d like to get down ‘n’ dirty with the RAW data being an ex-Systems Analyst & data monkey.
I’m by no means an expert but opening an image in Affinity Photo 2 showed the following info for an example PNG from my eVscope:
2560 x 1920px, 4.92MP, RGBA/8 – sRGB IEC61966-2.1
Apple dev state RGBA8 as a 32-bit-per-pixel, fixed point pixel format in which the red, green and blue colour components precede the alpha value.
However, the Sony IMX224LQR image sensor in my eVscope 1 is 12-bit (improved Sony IMX347 on eVscope 2).Thanks for making me look into this subject a bit further… everyday’s a learning day for me. Plus, it nudged me into sending a reminder to Unistellar about their promises around open-access to the RAW data.
Mark Fairfax
You can request the FITS data from Unistellar support and with Apple iOS devices the file is saved as PNG and not JPG. Unistellar have always seemed rather ‘guarded’ around the data and have said it will be available at some point but have said this for some time now, (there was talk of accessing via a Cloud shared area). This is a shame as their main competitor Vaonis Stellina allow easy access to the data in FITS & TIFF formats.
I can confirm exposure times are between 1ms & 4secs – I’m unsure if this is a limitation of hardware/software or if it is intentional.
The Citizen Science is definitely not dull – very informative & engaging with a great deal of communication & collaboration worldwide via Slack app groups. Just check out the Unistellar Citizen Science sections on their website
https://www.unistellar.com/citizen-science/
Unistellar collaborate with SETI and recently NASA-funded Unistellar exoplanet program UNITE.I absolutely love my Unistellar eVscope and wouldn’t hesitate to get the next version down the line, (with a bit of saving up mind you).
Mark Fairfax
As a fellow avid eVscope user I particularly enjoyed the balanced & comprehensive “Using the Unistellar eQuinox” article by Alan Thomas.
I heartily concur on the ease of use and portability for the eVscope & eQuinox and look forward to seeing where this new generation of ‘smart telescopes’ takes Astronomy.Well done to Alan!
Mark Fairfax
