Smartphone app-enabled

Although the StarSense smartphone adaptor and mirror holder give this otherwise normal-looking refractor a rather unusual appearance, it will transform your observing sessions. Simply download the StarSense app from Google Play or the Apple app store and insert your smartphone in the holder. Next, you have to align the smartphone with the telescope when you start up the app. Once this was done we were pleased to discover that it stayed aligned for the sessions in which we used the scope. The smartphone app is the core of the system: it plate solves the view of the sky the phone camera sees reflected in the mirror, allowing it to work out where it is pointing. This enables the planetarium part of the app to show you the way via onscreen arrows to a highlighted or chosen target. Move the telescope manually until you are almost on target, before leaving the scope for it to refine its position. Then you can fine tune the position so that the onscreen indicator box turns green to indicate you are on target. And it works, with all of our targets placed close to the centre of the target box and in the eyepiece too.