Plenty of scope for stargazing
image on a tablet or phone screen through the app. Then you can snap a picture and upload it to social media, demonstrating you’re not the type of cosmic voyager who gets easily lost in space. Note to readers: more sci-fi movie and TV series name checks are coming up.
Stellina (£3,327, vaonis.com) is a similar proposition to eQuinox, even though it has a different aesthetic. Users place the futuristic-looking white plastic rectangular box on to a tripod. Once set up, the middle section of the device rotates out to point at the stars. This central column houses the telescope and the astrophotography wizardry. It also scans the area of the sky it’s facing. Users can then select constellations, galaxies or other celestial objects on the app for the scope to find – and it will then deliver pictures of the results to your device screen.
To a starter astronomer, these offerings are next-generation pieces of kit. I took pictures of the Cigar Nebula (a head-scratching 12 million light years from Earth), the Hercules Globular Cluster (25,000 light years away) and the Veil Nebula (a more modest 2,400 light years away).
I can’t select a favourite from these two scopes. I’m equally wowed by both. Set-up is simple and their allied apps are easy to understand and intuitive to operate. You can even place them in your garden, then sit on the sofa indoors observing the universe while technology does the heavy lifting.
There is, however, a price attached to this level of amazing.
Also, as a novice astronomer, you may want to conduct your own space odyssey by doing some of the work yourself. Fortunately, there are plenty of products on the market that provide a tech halfway house…
ECONOMICAL ASTRONOMY
An old favourite I’ve waxed lyrical about before is Celestron’s StarSense Explorer 114LT Newtonian Reflector (£199.99, argos.co.uk). This is a more traditional point-and-search scope, where users navigate their way through the sky manually via a laser sight. The StarSense app, however, hugely helps with this.
Once downloaded, your mobile is placed on a dock attached to the scope. The phone’s camera combines with the app software to take a snap of the sky. Once identified, the app guides you to whatever body you’re trying to locate via a series of arrows on your mobile screen that act like a satnav.
Another Celestron favourite is the AstroMaster 102AZ (£230, amazon.com). While it doesn’t utilise a phone dock, tech elements are provided by access to Starry Night software, which users download on to a computer, and the Sky Portal mobile app, which helps users search the sky. This refractor has a laser sight, an impressive build quality, a substantial tripod, strong mounting and a solid panhandle control to tilt the scope. I used the software to plan my viewing, and a combination of the app and the laser sight to locate targets. This enterprise was pretty easy and even I located obvious stars such as Betelgeuse in Orion, Vega in Lyra and Deneb in Cygnus. I appreciate these are small triumphs. But I’m a fan of this mix of app-enabled guidance and manual operation because I feel like I’m learning by doing some of the work myself.
CHILD’S PLAY
If you’re buying for a youngster, the National Geographic 114/500 Compact Telescope (£109, bristolcameras.co.uk) is pretty good. On its movable base is a compass and 360-degree markings so users can find north and the position of objects on the horizontal axis, before using the marked handle on the height adjustment wheel to locate them on the vertical.
I kept this scope on the desk in my office and used it to observe the Moon – the clarity was great. I even managed to use manual coordinates to locate Mars.
There’s new hope I could enjoy astronomy yet. Yes, that was another sci-fi film reference.
Would you call yourself a tech fan?
I try. The funny thing is, if someone shows me something, I’m more than happy to use it and explore. But if I’m the one that has to figure something out… nah.
What kind of tech helped you through lockdown?
I’ve got four kids who were all home-schooling at one stage. They were lucky enough to have a couple of iPads and a laptop but not everybody can have access to that. That’s why what LG is doing, by having a Laptop Library that children are allowed to use, is fantastic – especially now, with the technology we’re using and where everything’s going. It’s important children have access to things like this. When I went to visit a school where they launched the library, it was fascinating how much the children knew about all this. They were asking about Intel this and that and I hadn’t got a clue. But they knew everything and were very excited about these laptops.
What kind of tech did you have at that age?
A typewriter! I was born in 1978 so at school we never had things like that. I didn’t really have access to much technology when I was young, it wasn’t until I was much older – that was when technology started to really take off. My first mobile phone was a thin Motorola that flipped down with an aerial that came out [the StarTAC]. Then it got a bit jazzier when you had the Banana Nokia 8110 that slid down. But it was just for making calls and receiving texts back then.