• Stellina?

    From Ace Crysler@21:1/5 to All on Wed Apr 6 11:22:55 2022
    A friend's wife just picked up one of these. I didn't even know what it
    was and had to look it up. $4K, wow, it had better take excellent
    images for that price! Unfortunately, my friend says that they have not
    been satisfied so far.

    I think the problem with the general public is that they want a
    telescope to be like most gadgets today. Press a button and instant gratification. I think that's one of the reasons it has become quite
    difficult to get youth interested in astro as they'd rather stay busy on
    their phones playing games and such. Now we have the aforementioned
    do-it-all telescope in the hopes it will interest more people in the
    night sky. For the price, I think they're grasping at straws.

    Is there really such a thing as a totally automatic telescope from every perspective? Even the robotic scopes that are rented still often
    require image processing skills and maybe even knowledge needed to
    figure out exposure time, etc.

    Stellina, a good idea -maybe-, but wrong way to implement and way wrong
    on the price.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Andreas Kempe@21:1/5 to All on Thu Apr 7 00:32:57 2022
    Den 2022-04-06 skrev Ace Crysler <[email protected]>:
    A friend's wife just picked up one of these. I didn't even know what it
    was and had to look it up. $4K, wow, it had better take excellent
    images for that price! Unfortunately, my friend says that they have not
    been satisfied so far.

    I think the problem with the general public is that they want a
    telescope to be like most gadgets today. Press a button and instant gratification. I think that's one of the reasons it has become quite difficult to get youth interested in astro as they'd rather stay busy on their phones playing games and such. Now we have the aforementioned do-it-all telescope in the hopes it will interest more people in the
    night sky. For the price, I think they're grasping at straws.

    Is there really such a thing as a totally automatic telescope from every perspective? Even the robotic scopes that are rented still often
    require image processing skills and maybe even knowledge needed to
    figure out exposure time, etc.

    Stellina, a good idea -maybe-, but wrong way to implement and way wrong
    on the price.

    Searching for Stellina lead me to https://vaonis.com/stellina which
    from your description seems to be the thing you're describing.

    The site gives me clear marketing wank vibes and I agree with you
    assesment of everything needing to be a gadget. If it were cheap I
    think it could have made sense as a beginner's toy for someone you
    think might be interested in astronomy. They could then move to
    something better if they got hooked. For the price of 4 k$... that's
    another story. You can get a good scope and a good camera to go along
    with it for that kind of money.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From palsing@21:1/5 to Andreas Kempe on Wed Apr 6 19:16:36 2022
    On Wednesday, April 6, 2022 at 5:33:00 PM UTC-7, Andreas Kempe wrote:
    Den 2022-04-06 skrev Ace Crysler <[email protected]>:
    A friend's wife just picked up one of these. I didn't even know what it
    was and had to look it up. $4K, wow, it had better take excellent
    images for that price! Unfortunately, my friend says that they have not been satisfied so far.

    I think the problem with the general public is that they want a
    telescope to be like most gadgets today. Press a button and instant gratification. I think that's one of the reasons it has become quite difficult to get youth interested in astro as they'd rather stay busy on their phones playing games and such. Now we have the aforementioned do-it-all telescope in the hopes it will interest more people in the
    night sky. For the price, I think they're grasping at straws.

    Is there really such a thing as a totally automatic telescope from every perspective? Even the robotic scopes that are rented still often
    require image processing skills and maybe even knowledge needed to
    figure out exposure time, etc.

    Stellina, a good idea -maybe-, but wrong way to implement and way wrong
    on the price.
    Searching for Stellina lead me to https://vaonis.com/stellina which
    from your description seems to be the thing you're describing.

    The site gives me clear marketing wank vibes and I agree with you
    assesment of everything needing to be a gadget. If it were cheap I
    think it could have made sense as a beginner's toy for someone you
    think might be interested in astronomy. They could then move to
    something better if they got hooked. For the price of 4 k$... that's
    another story. You can get a good scope and a good camera to go along
    with it for that kind of money.

    "There's a sucker born every minute"
    - P. T. Barnum

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From RichA@21:1/5 to Ace Crysler on Thu Apr 7 23:08:50 2022
    On Wednesday, 6 April 2022 at 11:22:59 UTC-4, Ace Crysler wrote:
    A friend's wife just picked up one of these. I didn't even know what it
    was and had to look it up. $4K, wow, it had better take excellent
    images for that price! Unfortunately, my friend says that they have not
    been satisfied so far.

    I think the problem with the general public is that they want a
    telescope to be like most gadgets today. Press a button and instant gratification. I think that's one of the reasons it has become quite difficult to get youth interested in astro as they'd rather stay busy on their phones playing games and such. Now we have the aforementioned
    do-it-all telescope in the hopes it will interest more people in the
    night sky. For the price, I think they're grasping at straws.

    Is there really such a thing as a totally automatic telescope from every perspective? Even the robotic scopes that are rented still often
    require image processing skills and maybe even knowledge needed to
    figure out exposure time, etc.

    Stellina, a good idea -maybe-, but wrong way to implement and way wrong
    on the price.

    Fully-automated mediocrity. But when it's dumped in a year, count on losing $1000 or so.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From W@21:1/5 to RichA on Fri Apr 8 02:22:12 2022
    On Friday, April 8, 2022 at 2:08:51 AM UTC-4, RichA wrote:
    On Wednesday, 6 April 2022 at 11:22:59 UTC-4, Ace Crysler wrote:

    --cut--

    a good idea -maybe-, but wrong way to implement and way wrong
    on the price.
    Fully-automated mediocrity. But when it's dumped in a year, count on losing $1000 or so.

    I visited a Website full of amateur astrophotos, and looked at one deep sky image in particular. Then I dragged out an old telescope and looked at the same object through an eyepiece. The live view was much more interesting.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From palsing@21:1/5 to All on Fri Apr 8 20:03:02 2022
    On Friday, April 8, 2022 at 2:22:14 AM UTC-7, W wrote:

    I visited a Website full of amateur astrophotos, and looked at one deep sky image in particular. Then I dragged out an old telescope and looked at the same object through an eyepiece. The live view was much more interesting.

    Perhaps it was a lousy astrophoto.

    What was the object?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Quadibloc@21:1/5 to palsing on Sat Apr 9 19:58:41 2022
    On Friday, April 8, 2022 at 9:03:04 PM UTC-6, palsing wrote:

    Perhaps it was a lousy astrophoto.

    While I don't want to second-guess someone's account
    of his own personal experience, it is true that while it
    is possible to get impressive views of easy objects
    like the planets through a telescope visually, generally
    the belief is that interesting detail is only visible on
    deep sky objects with long photographic exposures.

    Maybe that belief is mistaken, though.

    John Savard

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