Astrofest

[Roy Easto]

Since Smart telescopes are all the rage and many people use them to
image all night I was interested to see this small clamshell observatory
at Astrofest.

[drja...@aol.com]

Thanks for posting that Roy. I've heard of these micro observatories but not seen any. Interesting to see what they look like as I have a Dwarf 3. Certainly micro.

It's an odd innovation in a way, as the cameras are so small and quick to set up that keeping them in the garden to face the cold, damp and heat waves seems not worth the downsides for the electronics on the basis of time saving.

In alt az mode all you have to do is level the tripod and open the phone app.

In equatorial mode it's getting the scope polar aligned using feedback from the built in app to what it calls 'perfect', but easy with a finely adjustable wedge to tweak alt and az manually, and to within 1 arc minute in reality. Auto focus is spot on and takes 5 seconds. The goto set up is quick, using the built in sky atlas, and fine tuning to centre is done by the built in plate solving on a closed loop. So far it's been about 10 fool proof and satisfying minutes, and you are good to go.

I keep an open mind and a closed wallet for the time being!

James


Sent from my iPad

> On 11 Feb 2026, at 12:11, 'Roy Easto' via croydonastro <croydo...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Since Smart telescopes are all the rage and many people use them to image all night I was interested to see this small clamshell observatory at Astrofest.
>
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> <Pulsar_Clamshell.jpg>