Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i Pro Pack – Motorized Dslr Night Sky Tracker Equatorial Mount for Portable Nightscapes, Time-Lapse and Panoramas – Wi-Fi App Camera Control – Long Exposure Imaging

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By adding an in-built Wi-Fi adaptor, Sky-Watcher has brought the Star Adventurer into the 21st century. Many people are familiar with Wi-Fi control of gadgets and this is appealing to astrophotographers who enjoy using a lightweight and portable mount and controlling it with a smartphone. The exciting new Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i adds now adds WiFi functionality to the immensely popular Star Adventurer astro-imaging platform, whilst retaining all the important original features. The WiFi features are operated via the free Star Adventurer Mini Console App for Android and iOS platforms. To assist with polar alignment both in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the SkyWatcher Star Adventurer 2i has a built-in polar scope; however, this polar scope doesn’t have a built-in illuminator, it comes with an external illuminator, which is a flimsy piece of plastic that can easily break after some use and it’s easy to lose. If I could request one change to the Star Adventurer mounts, it would be to have an effective illuminator built-in to the core of the mount and which can be dimmed to very low levels. If more product and equipment designers tried to do astrophotography in the southern hemisphere this might be less of an issue ;-). The App based alignment is easy for northerners with no need for the illuminator if you align during twilight once you can see Polaris.

SpeedyIt arrived the day after and it took me seconds to gett the parcel ready for recycling as it wasn't covered in tape. (04/05/2021) brian lee - Devon At Rother Valley Optics, one thing we pride ourselves on is customer service and quality of our equipment. When we test your telescope, we will ensure that it is of the highest quality otherwise, we will reject the scope under our strict quality control and test another model for your peace of mind. One of the main values to look at when testing a refractor is the Strehl ratio. The higher this number, the higher quality lens you have. At Rother Valley Optics, we will guarantee the highest possible Strehl ratio for your telescope. We will aim to provide 0.95 Strehl or higher on Takahashi, RVO Horizon, William Optics and many more! Generally, the higher the Strehl ratio, the lower the Astigmatism and Coma meaning a better image quality from your instrument. Once the Zygo test report has been completed, the optical alignment is thoroughly tested and tuned to ensure they are spot on before they leave us. Once polar-aligned, we programmed a range of timings using the app with the Canon 50D and its 18–55mm lens set at 18mm.

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An optional camera shutter release cable is available separately for many popular camera models/brands. We took a 30–minute exposure of the constellations of Cassiopeia down to Perseus with only slight star trailing. Although light pollution and a slightly hazy atmosphere did not help, a 20-minute exposure revealed pin sharp stars. The settings to configure the Console App for timelapse control could be made more intuitive. There are effectively two independent sets of figures - one to fix number and duration of exposures and the other to configure range and speed of motion. The App allows you to set the intended duration of the video file but this gets quite confusing as you need to set some parameters and then the others are determined based on these. My advice would be to set the exposure time and number of photos and let the App show you what the resulting duration of the video file will be (for a given frame rate). Then choose the amount of motion to apply - less is more in this case. I recommend not much more than 7 degrees per hour at night, unless you are shooting very short exposures under moonlight (<10 seconds). Pushing the Limits The process of setting up the SkyWatcher Star Adventurer 2i can seem daunting, but if you follow these simple steps, I promise you’ll have your Star Adventurer up and running in no time! We also measure the Power with our systems which is essentially the error from the reference sphere to the test optic. The reference sphere we use on our system is a very high quality sphere so the closer to zero the Power, the less error between the 2 elements thus ensuring a higher quality optical surface.

Polar alignment is vital and the Star Adventurer 2i has a built-in polarscope, which can be used for both Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and we found it worked without any extra calibration. The external polarscope illuminator does its job well, but it does need to be removed before adding the camera equipment for wide-field imaging. Vital stats Great service and delivery Thank you very much to Harrison Telescopes for your great service and delivery. A pleasure to deal with both in terms of pricing and a very fast delivery. I would definitely recommend to others ! (13/06/2021) Andrew - AberdeenExcellent The Skywatcher Star Adventure is an excellent choice for anyone starting out in Astro photography as it is easy to handle because of its portability, rather than getting right in from the beginning with a more heavier mount. (17/01/2021) Robert Anderson - Paisley Scotland You will also see some more values such as Astigmatism and Coma. Again, these are measured by the interferometer when we take measurements of the optical surface after adjustment. These are values which ideally would be at 0 but as our test optics are all curved lenses, there will always be astigmatism and coma present. The lower the number, the less of these aberations you will effectively see but with most refractors, you can buy field flatteners which will compensate for the coma anyway. The astigmatisms value is explaining the error between the symmetrical curvature of the lens. Basically, no lens will be perfectly symmetrical, the lower the astigmatism, the more symmetrical the lens surface is. This is the setting to use when you’re controlling the mount via Wi-Fi and the free Star Adventurer Console app for Android and iOS platforms. Like the original Star Adventurer, it can be setup in two configurations, as shown in the images below, with the camera attached directly with a ball-head or with the 'fine-tuning mounting assembly', which effectively turns the 2i into a small equatorial mount, with movement adjusted in right-ascension and declination. Unless you have a collar mount around the lens allowing rotation, the orientation of the camera will be fixed with this approach. Fantastic piece of kit and exceptional service Harrison Telescopes expertly guided me when deciding on what I needed to begin my journey into Astrophography. The Skywatcher Star Adventurer is a well built and user friendly piece of kit. It is ergonomically made and very intuitive to use. (11/01/2021) Tristan - Newcastle