![]() ![]() Vaonis markets Stellina as a complete ‘observation station’ incorporating all the elements needed for astrophotography. Furthermore, the instrument has built-in humidity and temperature sensors, so if Stellina senses that the night air may be falling below the dew point, it activates a built-in lens heater! The stubby carbon-fibre Gitzo tripod supplied means that Stellina stands just 86cm high when the device is powered down or sleeping. Given that most of us have the misfortune of living under some form of urban light pollution, Stellina incorporates a CLS (City Light Suppression) filter. Vaonis chose a colour Sony IMX178 CMOS sensor delivering a field of view of almost 1.25 degrees across the diagonal, which is similar in extent to the Pleiades star cluster, for example. Stellina isn’t intended to be used visually, so an electronic detector lies at the focus of the objective lens. ![]() Stellina is also self-focusing at the start of an observing session, so you never have any excuse for a blurry picture. Remember that this is a doublet objective lens, albeit one made using high-index, low-dispersion lanthanum glass that reduces chromatic aberration for improved colour fidelity. ![]() While this may not seem a particularly ‘fast’ optic in conventional photographic terms, it is par for the course for refractors intended for astrophotography of extended objects like nebulae and galaxies. The optical heart of Stellina is an 80mm ED doublet lens of 400mm focal length, hence it’s an f/5 system. It’s targeted at first-time users wishing to capture detailed images of nebulae and galaxies with the absolute minimum of effort, either to view on a smart device or – if you like to dabble in image editing – save in a variety of formats to a USB memory stick for subsequent processing on a desktop computer. Stellina is, first and foremost, an astrophotographic instrument, primarily for deep-sky objects. Vaonis’ idea of what the all-singing, all-dancing personal robotic telescope should look like and how it should perform is quite a departure from Unistellar’s eVscope. The base of Stellina drops into place and is secured by the locking lever shown. The supplied Gitzo carbon-fibre tripod is just 37cm high. Vaonis’ product eventually came to be marketed as the Stellina ST80 observation station, the instrument reviewed here. Vaonis were also working on their own fully automated, self-aligning telescope system, again using a smartphone or tablet to both control the instrument and view its output on-screen. ![]() The eVscope was conceived in 2015, but the following year saw the founding of a competing French company called Vaonis, by Cyril Dupuy, a start-up entrepreneur with a background in optics and aerospace. The eVscope is a self-aligning computerised telescope capable of displaying near-realtime colour images of galaxies and nebulae via its built-in electronic ‘eyepiece’, or on the screen of a controlling smart device via Wi-Fi. In a recent review of the eVscope (AN, August 2020), I described how Marseille-based company Unistellar used a successful 2017 Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to turn their ‘Enhanced Vision’ telescope concept into a commercial product. Image: Vaonis.Īs any student of telescope history will know, France has a long and distinguished tradition of optical innovation that now extends into the twenty-first century. The sleek Stellina, measuring 47 × 39 × 12cm, looks almost like a robot out of WALL-E. ![]()
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