Sky & Telescope - January 2025 - 67

a 180° U-turn from my typical productreview
process. Rather than download
and pore through the scope's 41-page
user manual and familiarize myself
with the hardware, I simply set up the
scope in my backyard observatory and
plugged in the power supply to top off
its internal battery. Ignoring my own
curiosity, I didn't flip on the scope's
power switch. Likewise, I downloaded
the iOS version of its Celestron Origin
control app on my iPhone 11 Pro (the
app is also available for Android devices)
but didn't launch it. Those things would
have to wait for a clear night. And wait
was the key word here. Clouds, a full
Moon, and a seemingly endless river
of smoke thick enough to sometimes
obscure 2nd-magnitude stars flowing
over New England from wildfires thousands
of miles away kept my " first light "
experience on hold for days. Finally, an
evening came that wasn't great, but it
was good enough to try out the scope.
Here's how it went.
Under a Night Sky
Shortly before astronomical twilight
ended, I powered up the scope and
launched the app on my iPhone. Within
moments a message appeared asking me
to connect my phone to the Wi-Fi signal
from the telescope. Doing that started
the Origin moving while I read through
additional on-screen instructions for
how I could connect to the scope via
a home network or save that option
for later. Suddenly a message appeared
Andromeda Galaxy,
20-minute exposure
saying " Ready To Image. " Really? Ready
to image? How could this be? I don't
think three minutes had passed since I
powered up the scope.
The app's home screen showed a
real-time planetarium view of my sky
with the globular star cluster M13 in
Hercules high in the west. I tapped on
the cluster and touched what I assumed
to be the app's Go To symbol. The scope
quickly and quietly swung toward the
cluster and within seconds I could see a
faint smudge centered in the app's small
" live " window. Tapping the camera
icon on the screen expanded this view,
and within seconds a surprisingly good
image of the cluster appeared as the
first 10-second exposure was automatically
downloaded and processed by my
phone. Exposures continued to accumulate,
with an updated image appearing
about every 10 seconds. In less than
a minute I found myself staring at a
fine color image of the cluster. This
would certainly be a " Wow " moment
for someone new to astroimaging, and
frankly it was one for me, too!
When you stop the exposure sequence,
the app downloads a stacked version of
the image that's been automatically created
and internally stored in the scope's
50+ gigabytes of memory during the
imaging sequence, processes it, and saves
a copy in your device's photo gallery.
As with any astronomical imaging,
the longer the exposure sequence the
better the result. But image quality was
secondary to my interest in exploring
Origin's features, so I kept my exposures
to just a few minutes this first night.
Nevertheless, by the end of the evening
I had a noteworthy collection star clusters,
bright nebulae, and galaxies stored
on my phone. Fainter nebulae definitely
needed longer exposures than I was
making, especially given my smoky sky
conditions. On subsequent nights when I
devoted more imaging time to individual
Left: Origin's camera is built around a 6.4-megapixel Sony IMX178 CMOS color sensor with a Bayer BGGR filter pattern. The scope's dew prevention
system can be run manually or automatically using sensors that monitor ambient conditions. The author left it in automatic mode and never had a
problem with dew despite September in New England being notorious for dewing conditions. Center and right: Magnets hold Origin's filter drawer in
place. It accepts 1¼- or 2-inch astronomical filters, and the scope comes with 1¼-inch clear and dual-band nebula filters. The filter is a critical part of
the optical system, and one must always be in place. There's sufficient room to access the filter drawer when the dew shield is attached.
sk yand tele scope .o r g * JANUARY 2025 67

http://skyandtelescope.org

Sky & Telescope - January 2025

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - January 2025