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.

Den 2022-04-06 skrev Ace Crysler <ace9000@hal.net>:
> 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.

On Wednesday, April 6, 2022 at 5:33:00 PM UTC-7, Andreas Kempe wrote:
> Den 2022-04-06 skrev Ace Crysler <ace...@hal.net>:
> > 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

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.

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?

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