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Smart Telescopes: Democratizing Astronomy or a Threat to Traditional Astrophotography?
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- Опубліковано 16 січ 2024
- Countless Memes and Rants cover social media when it comes to smart telescopes like the Seestar, the Dwarf or the Origin. Come join me at the cozy fireplace and let's have a "serious" discussion....
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Links to scopes covered in this video:
Seestar S50: Agena: bit.ly/4aJnxNc or HPS: bit.ly/3wIhV7Q
Celestron Origin: HPS: bit.ly/3WSi1Vf
#astrophotography
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I'm a proud Boomer and have been an amateur astronomer for fifty years. My specialty is planetary imaging with my Celestron 14" Edge HD. I also have the Vaonis Vespera for deep space imaging. I love my Vespera. Its ease of use and image quality is amazing. I even use PixInsight to post process. I agree with you that we are seeing a rapid revolution in astrophotography. Smart telescopes allow more people to enjoy astronomy because it now fits it into their busy lives. I suspect in 3-5 years we will see 8-10 inch smart telescopes. The hobby is changing for the better.
There are about 8 members in my club that have bought a Seestar S50. One member is doing his first astrophotography ever and really enjoying the new aspect of his hobby. Several of us, like me, are using it for outreach. I have a full AP rig that, once set up can get a much better live image in a short amount of time, but these Smart telescopes bring a whole new aspect to what we can do to introduce new people to the hobby.
When I was young, I used the university’s refractor and my SLR camera, and FILM. It was hard. I still have my first photos that I created in the dark room. I have the dwarfII and the evscope2. I love the convenience and ease. I never want to go back in time to that.
My 7 yrs old Grandson did an entire imaging session by himself with the Dwarf2 , he uses the stacked image, which is enough and very good for people who don't have any knowledge about astrophotography . Now that he has had a pleasant experience, he is very interested in astrophotography 😊
Exactly - and that is just perfect - earlier he would have received a cheap refractor, would have been disappointed about what there was to see and lost interest!
@viewintospace that's it. Absolutely. He is very excited. He is just waiting for clear skies... another frustrating part.
The seestar and dwarf etc is an excellent beginners setup due to its simplicity, You will learn a lot about the stars and planets and how to set up and it's a great intro into Astrophotography. HOWEVER don't expect awesome images, yes they will look great on instagram but you are very limited with what you can do with it.
1: it is not an eq mounted device which means horrible field rotation as you use it during the night
2: the image quality is Meh compared to what you can do with a better scope, a cooled camera and an equatorial mount (obviously they do cost money)
3: If one thing breaks on it then you dead in the water. It is more or less a paperweight whereas with a dedicated Astro setup you can chop and change, the sky is the limit.
4: resale value will plummet as soon as the next incarnation comes in. Whereas you don't lose as much in resale for dedicated equipment
Don't let what I said put you off however as I still think it's great for beginners and such a great learning tool for outreach, schools and for those days when a more seasoned astrophotographer just can't be bothered setting up or is traveling.
To me it's simple.
The ones that are 100% automated that require nothing but the user tap a few things in the app and then the user uploads to social media and claims to be an astrophotographer.. Yeah, not so much. That feels to me like a friend that claims to have built his own computer when all he did was buy the parts and watch me building it for him. lol
The newer iterations like the SeeStar and Celestron Origin are a bit different. They have somewhat decent cameras and will let you manually process images. The Origin will let you use filters. And they will let you save and then download raw data for manual processing. I'm ok with this. The user actually has to do something.
Us serious astrophotographers have mostly automated rigs anyway. Some have home observatories. There's very little hands on stuff we do to capture images anyway. We capture, then process the data. Same as with the SeeStar and Origin.
Like it or not, this is the future of astrophotography.
Astrofotography is a fascinating hobby, but it is technically very demanding from the beginning. The know-how required for the choice of the equipment, the setting of the optimal operating parameters, and the mastering of the pre- and post-processing steps may easily reach bachelor or master level, at least if the creation of high quality, high resolution pictures is the ambition. I say this, because I was lucky enough to start this hobby from a professional background as PhD in experimental Physical Chemistry, and yet it took me 3 years to reach the level I am now satisfied with. Therefore I consider smart telescopes a welcome tool to lower the entry barriers into this demanding hobby. The most ambitious will soon upgrade to a more flexible and dedicated equipment and others will enjoy the quick initial success, which these instruments enable.
the car was a threat to horse drawn wagons. my father refused to ever buy a computer. there will always be people like this. they get left behind.
My opinion: I have two major hobbies: 1 is music/writing/recording 2 is Astrophotography. I look upon both in the same way. There are people who are 'creating' music online simply by using DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) on their computer which provide loops, sounds of every instrument under the sun and they don't even need to press a keyboard/piano key to play them. They don't even have to understand how to build a chord or understand key signatures etc. It removes all challenges and leads to dreary "paint by numbers" garbage. I write/construct my music in my head and then flesh it out with guitars, bass, keyboards, vocals etc. I am not proficient with any instrument but view myself more as a composer than instrumentalist. What I produce is by no means brilliant but it is real and authentic.
I see astronomy the same way. I'm not so interested in taking an award winning photograph as I am capturing something which is simply mine and authentic and something I know took some effort in doing. Take all of that away and what you are left with is a machine churning out a photograph. It's not yours. It's the machine's. Just as, if you google astro photographs online, either someone else has taken that photo (and you can certainly download it) or Hubble or the James Webb have. You've done nothing but acted as a recipient of a photo and not the generator of it. I see these things as toys for people with more money than sense and who really have little interest in learning the hobby but have "bought a dog for Christmas". These 'toys' have only been around a few yearsyet the number of them I already see for sale, used, is growing. This comes as no surprise to me and the vast number of youtubers 'marketing' these things for the producers of them, I find quite sickening as I know these youtubers really would not think of using these products in any real serious way. Anything for a buck though and another company willing to sponsor a video. These same youtubers, I'm sure, would happily have "Brought to you by Pfizer" splashed over their videos if they could.
Very well written - great thoughts!
Good as a stepping stone. Cheap enough, very portable and giving decent results. Will show it's limitations pretty fast when you start running out of finding appropriate size/brightness targets and you will start looking for a better solution.
Premium ones like Stellina, Vaonis ... are good for fat wallets because at that price range you can buy a whole entry level kit.
My grandson is fascinated by my astrophotography and wanted to start himself. I bought him a medium-priced Celestron with goto mount, He got frustrated that he couldn't get an alignment model. I'm thinking of getting him a Seestar so he can just get interesting images. Perhaps this will give him the start he needs to think about getting equipment necessary for better images and images of deeper space.
Astrophotography is art as there is so much AI used its an art form and images are not real but in the eyes of the beholder. Things are getting added that are not there, and colours are often different from the same object. So its now art not photography but still not a bad thing as nothing worse than seeing all the same image. Its like having all the houses down the same street all like the same, but with AI and your impression of that object makes it your own unique interpretation of how you see it with your own artistic eye. Before digital came out and film was used all Astro photos all looked the same, so without your artistic touch the challenge was not there before digital and AI was being used. The thing is today its about perfecting your art and making it your own rather than a real looking object and making it look pretty, that's your challenge today
The interesting part is that deviating from reality is usually not done by AI (at least if we stick to the dedicated AP products like the XTerminator products) but it is done by us mixing emission channels for colouring purposes. But as you state, still much better that all pics mostly in red which is so totally boring....
I believe smart telescopes are just going to get better and bring lots more people into Astrophotography.
The Celestron origin is an example of making money of easy to use fully walled gardened setup, which could be built for less money with higher performance. I agree with the messed up comment, but also the camera, right! You need an AI generated backdrop with flickering candles, perhaps a mouse or two running around on the tables, and a spider spinning it's web!
Funny enough, with Leonardo.ai you can now animate the pics - so I tried it with exactly this intention. It did indeed make the candles and the fire flicker, but it also added a Zoom effect which made it unusable for the backdrop. And at the moment you can not influence how it animates it. So yes, also here we are very close but not there yet.... 😁
Hello Sasha. I mostly agree with your analysis but you may have missed the point with the Origin. The fact that it is built around standard components make it by far the most upgradable of the lot. A wedge has already been announced, the camera is said to be upgradable, and since the tube has a standard Vixen dovetail, you could in theory put it on a regular mount. So if Celestron is really smart, they will make the ASCOM drivers for the camera and focuser available. They could also release a much cheaper version of the rig by swapping the very expansive RASA tube for a small refractor at minimal development cost for them. If it’s the case, the name Origin would stand for « it’s the origin of your journey into astrophotography »: you start with an easy automated rig and progressively advance towards a more sophisticated one, as soon as your skills (and your finances ;-) ) improve.
Yes, yes, yes - but no.... 😁 You are totally right, but you overlook convenience and price. Lets start with a wedge - it is something very heavy and so you add another 5kg or even 10 kgs to the already heavy rig. I know that so well as I own a CPC-800 on a wedge.... And yes, a wedge will cost lets assume USD 500 or so... Then comes to cooled cam which will for sure cost around USD 1500 or more. Then comes the auto guiding for at least USD 500... So now we are at USD 6500 or more for an inconveniently heavy 6' RASA on a wedge - you wanna buy? Me not.....
@@viewintospace
I see your point but let's make another calculation: you bought a smart telescope, you caught the astrophotography virus and you want to upgrade to a "serious" rig. How much will this cost you ?
- if you bought a Stellina (3000 $) or a Seestar (500 $) you have to start from scratch, so let's say 1000 $ for a decent refractor, 1500 $ for the mount, 1500 $ for the cooled camera, 300 $ for the focuser and 500$ for guiding and miscellaneous. So we are talking a price tag ranging from 5300 to 7800 $. And you have to buy all this at once
- for the Origin, total cost of ownership will be 6500 $ and, after the 4000$ initial investment you can upgrade your rig progressively.
So I don't say it's the path I would have taken, just that the financial calculations are not that ridiculous and thus that there may be a market for this product
I really like your new digs. Looks like you moved into a castle? Keep up the great work!
Smart telescopes are for EAA astronomy not astrophotography so to different forms of astronomy. However you can pull of the fits files and process in the same way astrophotographers do and still takes astrophotography skills to get the best of them. but the main purpose is EAA astronomy which in in itself is not astrophotography but viewing almost live views, so a scope that enhances visual astronomy. I think its just another form of telescope. It wont replace the Spaghetti scopes of the more serious astrophotographer or the visual astronomer. A bit like how the smart phone has not replaced the DSLR yet as its more versatile and the top ones still take better photos, but the smart phone is so covenant and small its used by most . I do think the smart scope will replace a lot of traditional scopes, as can set up in a few mins rather than 30 mins or more, and have known people selling good serious rigs because its a chore to set up and take down and not counting all the cables. So for convenance think the smart scope has a bright future, and Celestron pathing the way to some customization as its camera is designed to be replaceable and think this is the way they really need to go in an effort to see spaghetti scopes threatened, but for many can see the convenience will win out just like the convenance of smart phones, but not replace those who want better results and customization. If smart scopes can go do this customization road could be the way forward for many more. But to have to replace the whole smart scope costs more and the argument of why some will always love to put there own system toghter as they can customise it, but a customizable smart scope could take some of the sting out of this argument
I think like so many other things, this is inevitable. I have absolutely no doubt this technology will eventually become the norm. The interesting question for me is whether or not visual astronomy will survive all of this. (I am as the owner of a 16 inch Dob with Zambuto optics, currently building a 24 inch Dob with a Mike Lockwood optics). But I have another question. What is often called out is that these scopes are all on Alt-as mounts, and therefore field rotation limits exposure times. But what I don’t understand and still have not gotten a good answer to, is why we can’t have software which can continue to make an exposure, even as images drift across the sensor. In other words, the information is coming in, and while yes, each individual detail would drift from pixel to pixel. I’m not clear why in principle software cannot continuously realign the information coming in and continue to integrate it into a time exposure. What am I missing here?
First of all I strongly believe that visual astronomy will survive it. Because who ever is attracted today to look a grey wisps and dots (not me 😁) will never be tempted by photography as this will always feel artificial to them.... But now to your real question: The advantage of long exposures is that enough photons of faint structures can hit the sensor to be detectable out of the noise. Now only when one exposure is finished, the data is moved from the camera to the computer and only then the software capability is relevant.
Well Stated, I believe that to take a telescope system that’s already setup and already to go with a click of a button is just a no brainier piece of equipment with no effort, you can show your friends and family and say just a few clicks wheres the joy in that. For example, if someone was just getting a new car, there first let’s say. If they bought an older one and fixed it up rebuilt the engine made it run well and took pride in what they accomplished it would mean more that one handed them with no involvement. I my self-built my telescope rig from scratch and studied and learned how it worked. Once I got it together, I was proud of my accomplishment. Then when I took it out the first time and got a very nice Image what joy to see the result. I think skill and hard work gives you the pride of accomplishment.
What you stated goes for many things in life. The more involved you are in its creation and operation the more meaningful it is to you.
Sasha, I agree that we are not there yet. This reminds me of an older record player or stereo system that was made up of multiple components. One can upgrade the individual components over time. The same seems to hold true for imaging rigs. One does not need to buy the entire rig, just upgrade the components as they improve. One does not need a new telescope if he/she already has a good one. Just my thoughts!
As a Boomer, I clearly recall the transition from Vinyl to tapes and how it took quite a while for the market to settle on a single cassette format, but once that happened, the Vinyl market imploded. Then it was CDs and now - nothing - all we want is stored on the internet and can be found with little or no effort. It is interesting that we don't need our own scopes - we could easily access time at remote observatories - but there is something in us that yearns to tinker, that hand's on experience that makes the image 'my image', rather than 'an image' - the smart scope that allows us to be hands on whilst eliminating some of the complexities of the hobby will do well.
Perfectly summed up - 100% agree!!!
Your comment about making it “my image” really resonates with me and is why I don’t buy time on the remote observatories. Somehow that just doesn’t seem like it would be “my image.” It’s a little like painting by the numbers just wouldn’t feel like “my painting.”
The Celestron has not been well thought out at all. The camera has an older chip installed, and is uncooled. So it's not going to attract many astrophotographers that target DSO's.
I equate these to a DSLR vs a Cellphone there will always be people that want to do more, its the same as people comparing zwo vs nina. Its nice to have an option for people to enter the hobby without spending $1000's. More people in = more money in to the industry which will mean more development and other companies coming in to compete.
Agree 100%. I currently primarily do remote imaging because I have an extremely limited view at home and Bortle 9 skies. I enjoy the processing end so I am happy for now but I would love to have a compact kit I can setup in minutes at my sister-in-law’s country home and DIY it. The newest smart scopes are close, but no cigar. I hope they will soon get there. I’m 75 so I can’t wait for long. 😊
depends on what you consider they are close to. they are extremely close to the 2-3k range of scopes like the one i own. thats pretty damn good. it will only get better.
Good points made here! I agree an equitorial mount is better, but you can take very high quality images without one because with fast optics (And the Origin is very fast!) and low read noise Astro cameras, you don’t suffer the historic read noise issue of short exposures required by an unguided Alt/Az setup. So now you are down to the only remaining issue: Field rotation over a long imaging run which causes the need to crop a bit of your image off, so there’s a bit of waste. But with square sensors (which are now coming out on future scopes) it’s minimized. I shoot alt/az and get great results with only a little waste due to cropping. The ease of use of an Alt/Az system is the benefit that you gain. I think that ease of use will win out in the long run.
1. You always want a bigger telescope. A lot of people that start with the smaller telescopes get inspiration and to tinker it as much as possible and will eventually jump into a bigger telescope.
2. When amateurs become better, then real astronomers are pushed to their limits again. It is fun to outshine the amateurs.
3. If you are a astronomer with big gear you probably want to have one or multiple smaller telescopes too. It fills the void when you are imaging with the big gun you can look around looking for other targets.
4. Innovation, smaller telescopes will bump up the processing software. Smaller telescopes need to compensate for the smaller sensor size. This knowledge will also bleed into the big telescopes software.
5. People will tinker with the smaller telescopes and probably dismantles it and mak it even better.
6. I have only a few clear sky hours per month, having 5-6 Seestars as a drone farm, will increase my number of targets or even have multiple exposures of the same target, maybe using different filters.
Great points - thanks!!!!!
@@viewintospace I have another one there is a community. All the days that you have no clear sky, you can see images taken by others feeling almost that you did have a clear sky.
On of the big surprises is to see the moon upside down what you used to see all your life.
And you can put the telescope on your roof to see targets that you may not be able to see from the ground.
But Celestron its an Evolution mount and can put it on a Wedge. The Dwarf 2 can use in EQ mode and many use in EQ mode so no Field rotation. Also don't need minutes at a time to get good images
About the Celestron to to decent AP you would need the wedge, a cooled camera and the guiding system of Celestron, all to gather at least another 2'000 if not more. And having had a wedge myself for the CPC-800 I know what that means - also weight wise....
Right on. I do fear the constent upgrading is a sustainability issue. E-waste is a serious problem.
Sorry the Dwarf 2 is still a good system, and has its advantages over the Seestar, wider field of view and daytime use
Just for clarity, you can use the Seestar in daytime also. It doesn't have the D2's autotracking and obviously only has the 1 lens, so not as versatile, but still you can use it in daytime.
As a fellow GenXer I totally agree with you! As I have said on other channels, good idea but bad execution. Mini RASA nice. AZ mount bad, camera bad, AI buzzwords bad, and fact that people would really only buy this because of the Celestron brand, bad! I feel you said all the rest 🙂 You would be better off with a Stellina for that price and would actually get better pictures 😕 Clear Skies!
The Origin also suffers from a non cooled imaging chip. So, probably still limited to rather short exposures even if equatorial.
Yes, saw that in Cuiv's video too. I also wreck my brain why they would do this. So, to get decent pics you need a wedge, a cooled cam which they perhaps later also offer as add-on and the star sense guiding system - so probably another 2'000 at least....
@@viewintospace Agree completely. It’s crazy to have to add a wedge, hence more complexity and fiddling, to something that is supposed to be simplifying the entire package. Then the $800 or $900 Star Sense Autoguider, and who knows how much for a better camera, and one would easily be in for an additional $2000 or more beyond the original $4000. Comparing that to something I did last May-AM5, ASIAIR Pro, ASI533MC, and William Optics Redcat 61-and I still spent less than what one would spend after augmenting the Origin. Yes, what I did last May isn’t for the absolute beginner, but neither is the Origin. For the beginner, it’s the SeeStar or something similar.
I agree. There are a couple of different issues in this for me: the ease of setup/use of the equipment and the quality of the results produced. As a terrestrial photographer, I've always been interested in astrophotography, but was never willing to research, buy or build the individual components of a rig. This hobby seems chock full of people who like to tinker. Instead, I wanted a complete, functional ecosystem that still requires my image decision-making, but not my construction skills. So a smart telescope will never be something I consider, but the next best thing - an ASI AIR Plus with a fully integrated ZWO rig - is what has allowed me to get into this hobby. I still make all the imaging decisions anyone else makes but with the convenience of a rig that just works. Convenience is very important to us Boomers.
What you’ve described-a fully integrate ZWO rig-is exactly what I acquired last May (see my comment earlier in this set of comments). And I’ve found what you describe, a rig that just works (once polar aligned, which is pretty easy once you get the hang of it). As a card-carrying member of the Boomer Generation, I’m 74, I found my previous setup of an SA GTi with my OM System OM-1, Olympus 100-400mm lens, laptop, and Sharpcap just too cumbersome (i.e., balancing, sitting outside in the cold dressed like an arctic explorer with the laptop in a laptop tent, then the Windows laptop misbehaving, etc.), so I wanted to simplify the operation and be able to control it from inside my house once it is set up on my deck. I have also found it doable to carry the entire rig into the house once the session is finished and then disassemble it in the morning (after sunrise!). We usually don’t have many clear nights in a row here, so I disassemble the rig most of the time after a session to take the stress off the ZWO tripod and the AM5. It takes me basically 10 minutes, if that, to reassemble it for another session, and I can do this in the house and carry it out onto my deck easily. And I have discovered that it is easier to carry with the 10-pound neoprene dumbbell I use for added stability kept in the fabric “shelf” that comes with the ZWO tripod. It is easier because keeping the neoprene weight there lowers the center of gravity of the entire rig making the rig less top heavy, so balance as the rig is carried is much less of a problem. Even though the dumbbell adds 10 pounds to the weight of the entire rig, the trade off for better balance is definitely worth it, especially late at night when one might not be at one’s sharpest. And does the rig track and guide well! Yes, the rig was expensive, but I found myself saying, “If not now, when?” And realized, of course, that I can’t take it with me. Hopefully this will keep me in the hobby for several more years.
@@ABCMO-bl5pi That's great to hear. I have to admit that I started with a "budget" mount and have been frustrated with it for over a year. Recently ordered the ZWO AM3 (since the rest of my rig - cameras, focuser, filter wheel, controller - are ZWO) and am waiting for it to arrive. I expect a flawless integration and operation once it is in place. Like you, I have to move the rig outside each time, and expect this to be much easier as well soon. Portability is a priority. Operating everything from an iPad in the house is the best part though. I think convenience, full integration and quality results can all co-exist happily with our setups. Best of luck with yours!
You said it perfectly: “Operating everything from an iPad in the house is the best part though.” And doing this basically negates the disadvantage of the rig operating on a wooden deck. Specifically, once polar alignment is completed, there is no reason to be on the deck. So one walks back into the house and stays there until the photography session is over. Wooden decks are considered the worst of all surfaces to set up on, but that is mainly because the operator is out there, and any operator movement affects the setup. With my previous setup, not only was I out there dressed like an arctic explorer, but I tried to sit in front of the laptop tent motionless, which made the environment even colder. So with the newer setup, a wooden deck isn’t really much of a problem. Something I’ll suggest to you after you put everything together with the AM3 is to connect the ASIAIR to your home’s wifi network in something called Station Mode. Connecting to the AM3 on its own should work well, but having things work through your home wifi should be even better. I can have my iPad anywhere in my two-level house, and I’m still connected in Station Mode. It’s fairly easy to set this up, but you might start with just connecting to the AM3’s wifi just to keep things simple to start with. But after a few sessions, you might try to set it up in Station Mode. Look at how to do this on You Tube videos although some of them are out of date now. The manual, unfortunately but not surprisingly, isn’t quite as helpful as it could be about this or many things about how this operates (I’m assuming the AM3’s is the same as the AM5’s in this regard). Good luck and clear skies!
I see these as an entry point to the hobby, much like the basic sky tracker and camera setups were for the previous years. If someone gets hooked into the hobby, they will invest in better quality gear. If not, they are out a nominal amount of money to give it a try.
Maybe. We’ll see it…
Let people decide. The more the merrier.
Sorry you do have raw photos you can processor so your wrong
Smart telescopes are to astrophotography what iPhone cameras are to dslr's. Automatic acquisition makes mediocrity easy.
Yes, but not in the negative context you are stating. I actually studied photography in college and owned a SLR and then DSL for most of my life. But when the iPhone cams got better and better, I used them more and more. I would not say I make worse photos or care less about composition - but I have way more opportunities as the iPhone is always in my pocket while the DSLR was heavy and bulky and do only with me on special occasions. Same will be true for smart telescopes. Do you really think I setup my scope if I know in 2 hours it will be cloudy again? No, definitely not. But just putting a smart scope out there? Why not? So it's not about mediocrity, but it's about opportunity.