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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Once polar-aligned, we programmed a range of timings using the app with the Canon 50D and its 18–55mm lens set at 18mm. To do astrophotography, I often need to move as far as 140km away from my place, park the car and walk on trails for 20 minutes before setting up for the night. The SAM is really designed to be used with lenses of 55mm or shorter focal length, due to its payload capacity of 3kg. This means you only need a rough polar alignment as at such a wide focal length you won’t see star trails until you reach much longer exposures, perfect for beginners. With its 5kg payload capacity, the Star Adventurer GTi is well-equipped to handle a DLSR or mirrorless camera with a wide-angle or telephoto lens plus accessories, a compact astrograph telescope dedicated astronomy camera, or simply an OTA for visual use via its 45mm dovetail saddle.

My heaviest configuration includes a 300mm lens, the camera, and a guiding system built around the ZWO Asiair. As an added benefit to amateur astrophotographers, this tripod includes a spreader for added stability and a handy eyepiece tray. The mount body is the workhorse of the Star Adventurer 2i. It contains the integrated polarscope, control selection knob and various ports, yet is quite lightweight and can be used when it’s attached directly to a tripod – with latitude adjustment done via the tripod’s tilt head – or with the supplied equatorial wedge. Equatorial wedge Quality control feels a bit random, with units performing great while others having all sorts of annoying problems: stiff rotation, loose dials, etc.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. If the gear is mounted using a lens collar or tube rings, one can rotate the camera, thus regaining control over the camera orientation. The way I do this is to use a star finder app on my phone, or Stellarium on my laptop. Once you find your target, aim your camera or telescope at the nearest bright star. If you’re using a telephoto lens, then you can make this process easier by zooming out to give you the widest field of view. The better you polar align your mount, the longer you can expose the sky while still getting pin-point sharp stars for the best image quality. The concept of Polar Aligning an equatorial mount such as the Star Adventurer. How To polar Align In The Southern Hemisphere

Controller Via Wi-Fi using free SynScan App for iOS and Android devices or Synscan Hand Controller (available separately) From your first starry landscape to your latest deep sky image with a cooled astro camera and guiding kit, the Star Adventurer will not let you down. And when in a dark location, I get often overwhelmed by the number and brightness of the many stars I see in the Polar Scope. The Star Adventurer can control your camera, and the cable you need is available from SkyWatcher for all the major camera brands, but it is optional.To polar align the Star Adventurer Pro, you need to align the latitude wedge with the north or south celestial pole from your geographic location. For me, that means adjusting the altitude control knob so that 43 degrees north is set. 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. Finally, your sky has cleared up, and you are under the stars with your new mount. What to do next? Under the stars with the Star Adventurer. When using the mount with a DSLR camera and lens, the ball head and adapter is a handy configuration.

the tripod is sturdier than I expected, but the flip side is you're probably not going to be taking this tripod on a plane 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. In this guide, we have discussed how to verify everything is working correctly, how to take care of it, and how to do maintenance to keep it performing well. The mount, being very portable and very easy to transport, I would've expected something like a dedicated Skywatcher GTI travel case or soft bag for it, as the box where the mount is stored is just a normal cardboard box, so I'm hoping Skywatcher would make such product, has I can see this mount being very popular.The power consumption is fairly low, and a set of batteries will last for multiple nights, and with low battery power, the LEDs on the star adventurer will start to blink. The Polar Illuminator allows you to easily see the reticle in the polar scope for the polar alignment. The polar illuminator with the adaptor for the declination plate.

With the clutch undone, place yourself to the side of the polar scope: since North is in front of you, make sure the balance is slightly heavier in the east direction (your right). All you need to do is to calculate by how many degrees you have rotated the Polar Scope. Let’s assume that after having framed the Pleiades, the mark for October 31st on the Date Graduation Circle is now pointing at the mark for 2 a.m. on the Time Graduation Circle. This means you have rotated the Polar Scope by +2 hours. For deep sky astrophotography and anything beyond ultra-wide star fields, you should mount your gear using the Declination plate.The Star Adventurer has a port for auto guiding. I haven’t used this function myself for two reasons. 1. I don’t have a guide scope & guide camera, and 2. the Star Adventurer can only guide in Right Ascension (RA). In PS Align Pro, tap on the icon next to the one with the light bulb and set rotation. Now the orientation of the displayed reticle is changed to match the one you see in your polar scope. If you Google Brussels coordinates, you’ll find I am located at latitude 50.8° N and longitude 4° E. This is respect to the GM. Since I am at longitude 4° E and my LSTM is 15° E, I am 11° W from the LSTM, and this is the value I have to set the Time Zone Scale to. It’s a very rewarding process if a little frustrating at first, and you’ll thank yourself for it long term. If you do that, remember to mount the cover on the polar scope, to avoid having the battery cover, and your precious phone with it, fall off the mount 😉