DWARFLAB Dwarf II Smart Digital Telescope - Portable, Ultralight, and Packed with Advanced Features for Astronomy Star Parties, Birding, for Adults and Kids, Beginners and Advanced Players (Classic)

Product Information

I spent much of yesterday persuading my iPhone and Android tablet to communicate with the DWII, then updating its firmware (using the tablet)…got there in the end. DWARF II is a compact smart telescope with dual camera and AI power. You can take shots of deep sky objects, Galaxy and Nebula. Watch and record videos of birds and animals. Image quality: As you can see, the photos you get out of the telescopes are good but not amazing. You will not be winning awards for DSO images with a Dwarf II but it would be naive to expect otherwise for this price and size. During the day, I tried some sun imaging with the included sun filters. I was satisfied with what I did, but clouds were in the way. There were some sun spots I highlighted in my image.

Like any product, the Dwarf II is not perfect. It's software, after all. I saw a few bugs, such as the software forgetting what my exposure settings were. DwarfLab informs me a soon-to-be-out update fixes that and lets you set up templates for frequently used parameters.

What's in the Box: DWARFLAB DWARF II Smart Telescope - Deluxe Bundle

The main screen shows a lot of choices, and there are sub-menus so the screen doesn't get too crowded. If it's nighttime, you tell the telescope to initialize, and in about a minute, the telescope points skyward on its own and figures out where it is and where it is pointing. No polar alignment is required, but you can polar align, and we'll talk about that later. Connect your smartphone/tablet with DWARF II via WiFi, then you can wirelessly control DWARF II through DWARFLAB App (available for Android & iOS) and take pictures/videos.

Are you an amateur astronomer, bird watcher, wildlife photographer, or just a photography enthusiast that wants to capture things you can’t get close enough to, like a ball game or a galaxy? Well, DWARF II is exactly what you need. Sort of but even a modest 3 inch refractor with a CMOS camera can easily out perform the Palomar 200 inch scope with its photographic plates, who knows what technology will come next.. The Indigo link below has a bit more info on the Dwarf 2 along with some additional pictures of its Astro-use. I moved onto Messier 8, the Lagoon Nebula. The last several weeks in Arizona have been hot and humid, and I've been dodging rain. I got only three minutes of M8, and I was surprised how well it came out.

Specifications: DWARFLAB DWARF II Smart Telescope - Deluxe Bundle

To start your imaging session, put the telescope on its included tabletop tripod or use a standard photo tripod, which I did. Turn it on, and its LED lights start to glow, showing your battery level and if you're connected. The battery that comes with the Dwarf II is a 5,600 mAh rechargeable unit. If you buy the fancier model, you'll get an extra battery. Each battery lasts a few hours and is easily changeable in the field. The whole telescope, with a battery inside, can charge from a USB-C cable and power source (not supplied). Using the Dwarf II Under the Stars It may not be the finest smart telescope around, but if you can get a good second-hand price (Unistellar no longer sells this model) then it’s worth considering because it still offers incredible images of faint galaxies, nebulae and star clusters despite light pollution. Since it’s a reflector telescope it will occasionally need collimating (see below).Read our full Unistellar eVscope review. What is collimating?

But for astrophotography, smart telescopes are really disrupting a pursuit that had a relatively high barrier to entry in terms of the money you needed to spend and the amount you had to learn. If you are looking for a traditional astronomical observing experience, a regular telescope like a large dobsonian would be best for you. You will also see some more values such as Astigmatism and Coma. Again, these are measured by the interferometer when we take measurements of the optical surface after adjustment. These are values which ideally would be at 0 but as our test optics are all curved lenses, there will always be astigmatism and coma present. The lower the number, the less of these aberations you will effectively see but with most refractors, you can buy field flatteners which will compensate for the coma anyway. The astigmatisms value is explaining the error between the symmetrical curvature of the lens. Basically, no lens will be perfectly symmetrical, the lower the astigmatism, the more symmetrical the lens surface is. The moon was full, so I gave it a try. I thought the picture was good. The Dwarf II autofocused (there's manual focus too), and I could see good detail on the surface of the moon, even the bright crater Tycho and some of its rays. Once the Zygo test report has been completed, the optical alignment is thoroughly tested and tuned to ensure they are spot on before they leave us.Connect your smartphone/tablet with DWARF II via WiFi, then you can wirelessly control the telescope through DWARFLAB App (available in Android & iOS) and take pictures/videos. Note: Please ensure that your phone/tablet supports Bluetooth 4.0 & WiFi 5GHz It may not have been mentioned that much in SGL but it has been selling like hot cakes over in the US and has generated a bit of a frenzy over on the CloudyNights (CN) forum. CN can be a bit pedantic about posts in the wrong forum sections, so because the Dwarf can be used for EAA you can't post any post processing comments in that section (those are moved to the image processing section(s). I love the Dwarf , but the presenters even described the interface as "rough" . Maybe the software should have been perfected before releasing it . After all the new interface does look better . Its just a shame about the limited target list . ( yes i know we can enter co-ordinates but thats fidly and time consuming and something that goes against the concept of simplicity of the product for the user ) Still, the Dwarf II was mostly trouble-free, and it never failed to get to a chosen target. It's impressive in design and execution. Not good for planetary imaging: The short focal length does not lend itself to planetary photography. Deep sky astrophotography is its specialist field.