Verdict
Unistellar ’s Odyssey Pro is a very interesting equipment for anyone who ’d like to see more of the objects in the nighttime sky . It ’s superscript to picking up a traditional scope and attach a camera to it in term of usability , but the main drawback is that , at the time of piece of writing , it cost a peck of money . You’ll get a batch out of the Odyssey Pro as long as you ’re prepared to stay up late , but by drop the same amount of money into a larger reflector and a consecrated television camera apparatus , you ’ll be able to teach more about prototype capture and processing and potentially produce better solvent .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
The night is dark and full of wonder , but it avail if you ’ve got something to help make them more visible . That ’s where telescopes come in , and Unistellar has a range of interesting mechanize , app - controlled models that take a mass of the hard work out of stargazing .
The Odyssey Pro is smaller and light than theEvScope 2andeQuinox 2 , but sit nigher to the more expensive EvScope in terminal figure of price . It beats those instruments in one important way – this secondly - gen golem background now has autofocus , so there ’s no more fiddling around with a wheel in the dark .
Beyond that unsubdivided improvement , Unistellar ’s highly convenient reinterpretation of astrophotography stay to produce splendid results .
With its power to track an object for as long as it takes to incur a clear-cut trope of it the wandflower and nebulae that are n’t seeable to the nude optic , you’re able to witness thing you never recognise were mess about in the darkness between the stars , and the flavour as the spiral blazon of a extragalactic nebula emerge from the background is one of literal find .
Design and Features
Unistellar ’s automated telescope consist of a Newtonian tube with a digital sensor and Wi - Fi hot spot attached , all wrapped in a smooth plastic coating that fit neatly into the top of the supplied tripod . It ’s a clean system , but one that was slightly impair by previous scopes being heavy , tricky to channelize and prone to swing in the wind . The Odyssey Pro fixes many of these faults simply by being smaller and light , though in the world of scope bigger is often safe .
The Odyssey Pro is also blackened all over , which is suboptimal for something you ’ll be using in the dark . It ’s possible to beak out thanks to the glow LED light , the color of which can give you a hint as to what the scope is doing , but it ’s also possible to trip over a tripod leg if you ’re not pay off sufficient attention – such as if you ’re glued to your telephone set screen .
The smooth-spoken conclusion of the EvScope and eQuinox scope give you more of a luck of go steady them in the night , so it ’s perhaps dear to set the Odyssey up and then sit down or go indoors rather than roam around where there ’s the potential to cause an accident .
Or you could string up a red light from it . During my use of the Odyssey Pro , some flying denizen of the night pooped on it , while a wandering hedgehog was unperturbed by its bearing , snuffling straight under the tripod leg , so it ’s not just world who might have trouble seeing it .
Luckily , you could operate the Odyssey from a length thanks to its Wi - Fi hot spot . tie your earpiece to this ( make certain you set it to remain attached , rather than flip back to your home Wi - Fi when it ca n’t find an net connection ) and you could go through setup , calibration and operation from inside where it ’s warm , as long as you ’re not too far away or have too many wall in between .
It ’s not the most herculean hotspot , so you might need to set the oscilloscope up closely to your windowpane if you intend operating it from inside , but the crucial thing is that you do n’t have to digest out in the coldness .
apparatus is a case of making sure the scope is flat , using the house of cards build into the tripod , and waiting for the Sun to go down . The automated standardisation process take virtuoso to be seeable , and the darker the sky the better . Once it can see some beamish points of lightness , however , it works out where it is ( taking GPS data from the machine-accessible gadget ) and which way it ’s pointing , and it can use this to revolve and fish itself to view anything you care , as long as there are n’t buildings , tree or a planet in the fashion .
The objective catalogue is contained in the app , and based on your emplacement ( running it on a pad gives you the welfare of a bigger sieve , but you may need to input your parallel and longitude if it does n’t have GPS ) tells you what you should be able to see that Nox .
It ca n’t take into account the effect of overhanging trees or obstructive buildings , however , so you ’ll need to use the object ’s direction and tallness data to work out whether you could in reality see it from your see spot . If you may , you may instruct the scope to slew to it , which it does quickly , quietly and accurately .
The catalogue can focus on objects such as the Orion Nebula , Bode ’s Galaxy , and the Hercules Globular Cluster but neglect comets , such as Comet 12P / Pons – Brooks , which was fall back in the glare of sundown but still technically visible .
simpleness of use is gamy up the listing of the Odyssey Pro ’s achievement , but if you want to treat it more like a traditional scope you could use the eyepiece , which is more like a little sieve that displays the camera provender . It ’s fine , but viewing on a telephone set or tablet covert is a more commodious way to see thing .
Image Quality
Get the scope locked onto an object and you may tap a button in the app to engage dynamic sign amplification , or Enhanced Vision .
This begins tracking the target , recording many paradigm and stacking them to produce a good image , keeping the desktop dark but bringing out the fainthearted glow from ionised gases or 1000000000 of wiz many lite - age aside .
Many recondite - sky object are dim as well as appearing small , thanks to quad being big , and the more of their Inner Light you may catch the good the trope you may get . With its focal ratio of f/3.9 , the Odyssey Pro let in more light than many with a standardised focal length , but the best images are obtained by give it to get over and stack for as long as possible .
Something large and bright such as the Moon requires only a few seconds of tracking to make a sharp-worded image from which you may well pick out the crater , marae and contrast of ejecta . The 6.4MP images can be downloaded directly to your speech sound ’s camera roll with the tap of a unmarried push , or you could get at the scope ’s 64 GB of on - board storage via Wi - Fi to obtain them as PNG , TIFF or FITS files if you intend processing them yourself later . Adding a bit of extra contrast in your phone ’s editing app is often all that ’s needed to work out some surplus detail , however .
When photographing more remote objects , such as galaxies , be organise to leave the telescope working for an hour or more . It ’s significant that the scope is n’t interrupted during this time , and that can be by the viewing gadget locking or disconnect from the Wi - Fi . These actions , along with the wind making it wobble or the object passing behind an obstruction , can conduct to the dreaded “ Enhanced vision interrupt ” content . There ’s a setting to ensure the ikon Indian file being constructed is immediately dumped to storage when this happens , and it ’s well worth grow on .
The figure produced by the Odyssey Pro are astute and while small have enough resolution to zoom into on a telephone or tablet screen , with the spiral arms of Bode ’s Galaxy ( M81 , 12 million light - age away ) visible after half an 60 minutes of exposure and improving after that .
lead of the M3 globular cluster ( at a distance of 34,000 wakeful - years ) although merged into one at the magnetic core , could be pick out with just 10 moment of stack despite light defilement from a nearby three - quarter Moon .
The Odyssey Pro ’s software system softwood with unwanted sky glow , whether from nearby cities or our natural planet , very well , keeping the sky black enough to counterpoint with the bright object you ’re hoping to find . Battery life , at up to five time of day , means you could observe well into the dark , and you could seize a might pack ( or a charger on an extension line if you do n’t mind the extra trip hazard ) to the USB - C larboard to carry this .
Latest deals
Should you buy it?
As a pocket-sized and light automated telescope for honor night sky object and share your photograph , the Odyssey Pro excels at making astrophotography more accessible .
It ’s rottenly expensive , while the 6.4MP files are outclass by many consecrated astro tv camera , as well as by strapping a DSLR or your telephone set to a telescope ocular .
Final Thoughts
Astrophotography is a hobby that means staying up deep at dark and accumulating expensive opus of equipment . In many ways it ’s arrant .
But it also demands that you slump large amounts of time into get and processing images . Unistellar ’s scopes simplify this part of the unconscious process , producing files that can be on Instagram within minute of arc of being taken .
Its modest size and weight make it an improvement over the fellowship ’s larger scopes like theEvScope 2andeQuinox 2 . The perpetually updated app and across-the-board catalog mean it ’s easier than ever to home in on a deep - sky object and see it , before save a ikon to your speech sound to show your friends .
However , you need to be prepared to pay for the convenience .
Trusted Score
FAQs
A smartphone app , connected via Wi - Fi , direct the telescope where to bespeak .
