Sky & Telescope - March 2020 - 68

S&T Test Report by Richard Tresch Fienberg

The Stellina
"Observation
Station"
This fully integrated system
promises to bring astronomy to
the masses. Does it deliver?

Vaonis Stellina
U.S. Price: $3,999
vaonis.com

What We Like

What We Don't Like
Lack of user input
Wi-Fi signal subject to interference
Bright blue power light

NO MATTER HOW EASY they make

it for someone to point a telescope at
a celestial object, if the view is disappointing that person is not going to
stick with astronomy. In a typical backyard telescope, the appearance of almost
everything beyond the Moon literally
pales in comparison to color images
from the Hubble Space Telescope, which
are everywhere. When you show a nonastronomer a star cluster, nebula, or
galaxy in your telescope's eyepiece, the
last thing you want to hear is, "That's
it?" - something I hear all too often.
Well, a new technological revolution
in amateur astronomy is upon us, and
it takes aim squarely at this problem.
Several "smart telescopes" are entering the marketplace, all designed not
only to ﬁnd their way around the sky by
themselves, but also to deliver colorful
views of deep-sky objects roughly comparable to what you see on the pages of
this magazine. Controlled via smart68

MARCH 2 02 0 * SK Y & TELESCOPE

Stellina packs a lot of equipment - an 80-mm f/5 apochromatic refractor that integrates
a color digital video camera, focuser, dew heater, motors, computer, and more - into
a very small, very sleek package standing barely 2 feet tall. Don't bother looking for an
eyepiece: Stellina transmits images via Wi-Fi to iOS and Android smart devices running
the free Stellinapp.

device apps, these are telescopes for the
internet age and are promoted by their
manufacturers as making the universe
accessible to all.
The ﬁrst of this new breed to make it
to consumers is Stellina, developed by
the French company Vaonis. Billed as an
"observation station," Stellina doesn't
look - or behave - like any telescope
you've ever seen. For one thing, it
doesn't have an eyepiece, ﬁnderscope,
or red-dot ﬁnder. Indeed, you don't look
through Stellina at all - its built-in
color digital camera sends celestial
images directly to your smartphone or
tablet through a Wi-Fi connection.

Introducing Stellina
At its heart, Stellina is an 80-mm f/5
apochromatic refractor married to a
color video camera whose Sony IMX178
CMOS sensor has 3,096 × 2,080 pixels,
each 2.4 microns square. Given the
telescope's 400-mm focal length, the

6.4-megapixel chip offers a ﬁeld of view
of 1° by 0.7°, enough to accommodate
the full Moon with room to spare, at
1.2-arcsecond resolution.
This shiny white, fork-mounted
telescope would look right at home on a
Star Trek movie set. The U-shaped base
couples to an included Gitzo Systematic
short tripod that holds the machine less
than a foot off the ground. Light from
the objective is reﬂected off an angled
ﬂat mirror through the altitude axis to a
camera housed in one of the fork arms.
The other fork has a compartment for
the supplied 10,000 milliamp-hour
(mAh) portable rechargeable battery
and two USB ports.
Also built into the system are an
electronic focuser, ﬁeld de-rotator, dew
heater connected with temperature
and humidity sensors, a light-pollution
ﬁlter, altitude and azimuth motors, and
all the associated electronics, including
a special-purpose computer. Stellina

VAONIS STELLIN A: SE A N WA LK ER / S&T; A LL PHOTOS
BY THE AU THOR UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED

Ease of setup and use
Good-quality color images
User-friendly (and free) mobile app
http://www.vaonis.com
Sky & Telescope - March 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - March 2020
