Unistellar’s Odyssey Professional good telescope delivers superb outcomes even from a light-polluted yard — and we now have the photographic proof to show it.
Not solely is the Unistellar Odyssey Professional a wonderful platform for novice astronomy, but it surely’s additionally a sturdy scientific platform. It is one which co-founder {and professional} astronomer Frank Marchis makes use of himself, and we had been fortunate sufficient to talk with him in regards to the Odyssey Professional as we examined it for ourselves.
Should you’re a stargazer, skilled astronomer, astrophotographer, or educator, the Unistellar Odyssey Professional gives a complete package deal that units up in minutes and may concentrate on hundreds of cosmic our bodies proper out of your iPhone or iPad. Regardless of its excessive worth, you may pull the Odyssey Professional out nightly to find one other portion of the universe hidden from the bare eye.
Unistellar Odyssey Professional evaluate: unboxing, preliminary impressions, and design
Unistellar’s Odyssey Professional suits in a surprisingly compact field, provided that it is a telescope designed to see interstellar objects. That is the entire level, although.
As one in all Unistellar’s co-founders, Frank Marchis, places it, “We needed to make a telescope that was simple to make use of, and you might take it wherever.”
We will safely say that they’ve performed that.
Certainly, Frank says that he is backpacked with the Odyssey Professional to some intense islands to seize unparalleled views of the cosmos. Unistellar does provide a backpack for the Odyssey Professional, and the burden out of the field would counsel a getaway-friendly design.
Unboxing the Odyssey Professional proved our idea appropriate, because the tube and tripod match properly into the padded field. The Odyssey Professional is compact sufficient to be backpack-ready, that includes a 320mm focal size and 85mm diameter main mirror.
Our evaluate mannequin got here in a flawless matte black colour. There’s a pink possibility obtainable, however the tripod stays black.
We just like the matte end on the product. Outside use means frequent dealing with, and polish invitations fingerprints and scratches.
Establishing the Unisteallar Odyssey Professional is easy. The tripod connects by way of a hoop with two screw mounts to safe the telescope.
As soon as safe with legs prolonged, the telescope has glorious stability and a modest footprint.
The Odyssey Professional contains a Nikon eyepiece — which we’ll discuss in higher element later — giving it a traditional telescope look. The usual Odyssey mannequin lacks this eyepiece and, whereas extra inexpensive, lacks the telescope attraction and stargazing high quality.
Our preliminary impressions of the Odyssey Professional are good. The standard of the supplies is respectable, there are lens caps for defense, the mirror is shiny and blemish-free, and the tripod is sturdy with out being cumbersome.
We additionally like that the preliminary setup and charging are simple. No particular instruments are required, despite the fact that some come included within the field. The charging cable is a USB-C design, that means that is no bizarre, cumbersome chargers to maintain observe of.
Unistellar Odyssey Professional evaluate: no astronomy data required
Whereas an out-of-the-box setup is perhaps simple, getting a telescope to level the place you need is not any small feat. Not less than, it was till Unistellar bought a maintain of telescope design as a result of most different telescopes require mirror tuning (a course of referred to as collimation) and a few technical astronomical data.
Unistellar’s Odyssey Professional automates that complete course of, permitting you to hook up with the telescope along with your iPhone or iPad and begin stargazing in minutes. Once you faucet on an object to view from the app, the Odyssey Professional makes use of GPS information, together with star positioning, to align itself and discover your required object.
To make it even simpler, as soon as the telescope finds your object, it would robotically modify the main focus and brightness so that you get a gorgeous view of the cosmic object. You get the picture in your iPad or iPhone and thru the viewfinder, making stargazing a extra communal occasion.
As soon as locked onto an object, the app allows you to reposition the telescope utilizing a touch-screen D-pad-like management system. This management allows you to fine-tune positioning or discover the realm for your self.
There are additionally no particular necessities for viewing objects of various brightnesses, such because the close-up vivid moon versus far-off galaxies. The one distinction is viewing the solar, which requires a photo voltaic filter, obtainable from Unistellar’s web site.
Unistellar Odyssey Professional evaluate: no darkish skies required
One other important problem for many stargazers is metropolis lights. Mild air pollution is a extreme drawback, particularly when viewing faint and distant objects. Any further photons from your home, the sunshine haze from a close-by metropolis, or perhaps a distant road gentle could cause disruption.
Unistellar appears to have solved the sunshine air pollution drawback utilizing some fairly intelligent methods. These methods embrace “stacking” pictures taken from the telescope to offer brightness and readability to interstellar objects.
The picture stacking know-how calibrates photons from house and filters out these originating from the planet. Likewise, the Odyssey Professional solely takes probably the most related photons to contribute to the picture you see.
As a result of the Odyssey Professional stacks pictures and filters photons, the longer you observe an object, the clearer and brighter it turns into. For metropolis viewing, meaning after about 20 minutes of focus time, you possibly can see extremely faint constructions, just like the Andromeda galaxy, some 2.5 million light-years away.
Plus, taking high-quality pictures of distant galaxies is now doable in darker rural communities and brightly lit cities. In actual fact, our photos got here from a telescope positioned within the coronary heart of Colorado Springs, a bigger metro space with loads of Air Power site visitors, gentle air pollution, and buildings obstructing stellar views.
In keeping with Frank and the Unistellar crew, the Odyssey Professional can deal with much more gentle than our humble abode, say, the strip in Las Vegas. Throughout CES week earlier in 2024, Unistellar had dwell demos in a on line casino car parking zone, viewing objects just like the Orion Nebula with full readability.
Unistellar Odyssey Professional: discovering appropriate interstellar our bodies
Stargazing is a magical expertise made higher by the lens of a telescope, which brings pin-pricks of sunshine into wonderful focus. Unistellar’s Odyssey Professional unlocks extra of the cosmos with much less time dedication, taking as little as 5 minutes from setting as much as stargaze.
To begin our journey, we first downloaded the Unistellar app on our iPad. The app can also be obtainable for iPhone, however we advocate an even bigger display screen since you do not need to miss any particulars.
After downloading and putting in, you have to to faucet the join button to sync your Odyssey Professional with the iPad. This step is essential as a result of, with out this hyperlink, you will be unable to seek for, discover, or view something.
Throughout our first time connecting the iPad to the telescope, we tapped join and let the app uncover the Unistellar Odyssey Professional. The preliminary connection took a few minutes, and we needed to flip off our VPN, however after that, we had been in enterprise.
As soon as related, the app will provide you with a desk of really helpful objects from a catalog of greater than 5,000, starting from globular clusters and galaxies to planets and asteroids. Utilizing your native information, Odyssey Professional may even advocate objects based mostly on what’s seen.
Tapping on an object will provide you with some astronomy-specific information, such because the levels of elevation, the seen time, and azimuth. The GoTo button will inform the telescope to search out that object and concentrate on it robotically.
As soon as in movement, the telescope swings round in regards to the joint location simply above the place the scope suits into the tripod. It takes a minute or so to find, focus, and brighten the picture for viewing, and obstructions, like clouds, will lengthen that point.
After the Odyssey Professional settles on the stellar physique, the article will likely be seen on the iPad display screen and thru the telescope’s eyepiece. However earlier than we proceed, let’s discuss that eyepiece for a second as a result of it is value its personal spotlight.
Unistellar Odyssey Professional evaluate: Nikon eyepiece
The Unistellar Odyssey and Odyssey Professional share many traits, however a notable distinction is that our Odyssey Professional evaluate mannequin options an exterior eyepiece constructed by Nikon. Nikon initially constructed telescopes as early as 1920 however fell out of the sport within the late ’90s.
Enter a possibility with Unistellar. In keeping with Frank Marchis, the aim was to companion with somebody with expertise in high-quality manufacturing, and the obtainable companion was Nikon, who introduced a century of imaging and telescope-building expertise to the desk.
For the Odyssey Professional, viewing by way of the eyepiece looks like an genuine stargazing expertise, and all through our testing, the eyepiece displayed a superior picture to what the iPad confirmed.
The Nikon eyepiece accommodates an OLED micro-display with a classy lens association that mimics optimum eye positioning. When viewing objects by way of this eyepiece, the mind really settles concentrate on infinity, permitting you to break down into the depth of the universe.
Though the Odyssey Professional is available in at $1,500 extra than the Odyssey, it is effectively well worth the improve, particularly if utilizing the telescope as a studying instrument or for group stargazing occasions.
Unistellar Odyssey Professional evaluate: viewing and astrophotography out of your iPad or iPhone
Now that you just perceive how pleasurable the Nikon eyepiece is for viewing the heavens, it is time to talk about the general viewing expertise. The Odyssey Professional is a fan-favorite for these as younger as seven and as outdated as our 79-year-old testing volunteer.
You are by no means too outdated or too younger to get pleasure from stargazing, and every object we settled on additional cemented our awe. Orion’s Belt is without doubt one of the most recognizable constellations within the sky, and what seems like a blur below the center star with the bare eye is a beautiful star-forming nebula— The Orion Nebula.
From the Unistellar app, we discovered the Oyster Nebula (positioned 4,240 light-years away), let the Odyssey Professional do its factor, and tapped the picture button to seize this picture. For almost half an hour, gentle from this distant nebula fell onto the Odyssey Professional’s sensor, producing this picture.
Whereas not laser-sharp, the picture exhibits beautiful reds, and the collections of fuel are clearly seen. Extra time and darker skies would make this picture extra akin to the astrophotography you is perhaps accustomed to.
Orion sits inside our Milky Method galaxy, which is spectacular sufficient. Nevertheless, the Odyssey Professional can attain out even additional, choosing up galaxies like Andromeda, which is featured within the picture under.
Followers of our photo voltaic system can concentrate on objects just like the moon, planets, and asteroids, making the Odyssey Professional a preferred possibility for yard astronomers on the lookout for NEOs or streaking comets. This picture of Jupiter captures the Odyssey Professional’s capability to concentrate on nearer objects simply in addition to additional ones.
Whereas not constructed explicitly for astrophotography, the interest continues to be doable with the Odyssey Professional. What makes it such a wonderful instrument is the power to concentrate on such quite a lot of objects with out requiring specialised data or further tools; every thing is self-contained.
Unistellar Odyssey Professional evaluate: genuine citizen astronomy, proper out of your iPad or iPhone
We had the luxurious of talking with co-founder Frank Marchis in regards to the Unistellar Professional, and we needed to ask him in regards to the capability to do actual science with this telescope. There was completely no hesitation about what this instrument is able to, and the pure science is at its core.
Unistellar has a dedication to citizen astronomy, enabling the Odyssey Professional to contribute to our understanding of astronomy. Not solely are Odyssey house owners inspired to take part locally, however the telescope really collects information very important for mathematical computations.
The corporate’s telescopes not solely show lovely pictures, however additionally they accumulate a mountain of knowledge from photon positions, energies of these photons, wavelengths, and extra. All of those are at your fingertips, needing solely a obtain proper from the Unistellar app.
In Frank’s personal phrases, he does extra skilled astronomy with a Unistellar telescope than he ever did with giant, government-sponsored scopes like those present in Chile or Hawaii. There are even two printed peer-reviewed articles that use information obtained from Unistellar telescopes.
We could not resist confirming {that a} telescope like this makes use of genuine photon assortment to construct the photographs. To this, Frank replied, “[It’s] a giant no-no to manufacture pictures in astronomy.” Unistellar is not any Samsung offering pre-captured pictures of the moon — the Unistellar Odyssey Professional is an genuine scientific instrument for the fanatic {and professional}.
Unistellar Odyssey Professional evaluate: the telescope market is crowded
For every thing that the Odyssey Professional excels at, there’ll all the time be somebody, someplace, that claims their scope can do all that and extra. Whereas it is true there are extra telescope choices than one can fairly depend, it is almost unattainable to search out the intersection that gives a whole cosmos viewing package deal.
On one finish of the spectrum, there are low cost telescopes which can be barely a step above a cardboard tube with two items of polished plastic, able to viewing the moon at greatest. On the opposite finish, some choices value as a lot as a brand-new Mercedes however can take the crispest pictures of deep-space objects.
Regardless, a number of good telescope choices compete with Unistellar’s Odyssey Professional, lots of which come at a fraction of the price. Likewise, conventional telescopes flood the market and promise an equal viewing expertise to that of the Odyssey.
Nevertheless, many of those options require a extra hands-on method, requiring mirror collimation, particular instruments, astronomical data, or correct temperatures. Most telescopes will want mirror changes with a temperature fluctuation of even just a few levels, however not the Odyssey Professional.
We examined the Odyssey Professional in varied situations, starting from a post-snow clear night time at 10 levels to a hazy spring night at over 50 levels. Every time we noticed the universe, the mirror robotically centered, that means we had a transparent picture no matter situations.
Unistellar Odyssey Professional evaluate: making it extra accessible to stargaze
The Unistellar Odyssey Professional we had been loaned for the aim of this evaluate is not an affordable good telescope possibility, but it surely gives one of the vital full stargazing platforms available on the market. It connects seamlessly with an iPad or iPhone by way of onboard Wi-Fi and may find objects in a matter of minutes.
The development of the Odyssey Professional can also be high-quality, but the overall footprint and weight make it cheap sufficient to hold to distant dark-sky places for prime stargazing. We can also’t say sufficient in regards to the Nikon eyepiece and advocate that anybody spring for the Professional choice to keep away from lacking out.
Skilled and novice astronomers alike can take pictures over the course of a number of minutes to hours with out distinctive cameras or tools to seize probably the most beautiful pictures. The Odyssey Professional makes it simple to begin viewing the cosmos, that means you may use this telescope night time after night time, versus various choices that sit in a closet untouched for years.
Plus, these passionate in regards to the scientific facet can have interaction with the citizen astronomer neighborhood and obtain their information to contribute to real-world publications. By way of our expertise with the Odyssey Professional, we rediscovered our love of astronomy and impressed that love in a number of others by way of nightly stargazing.
Unistellar Odyssey Professional evaluate: Execs
- No particular data or instruments required
- Set-up and stargaze in minutes
- Seize beautiful interstellar pictures>
- obtain scientific information
- Catalog of 5,000+ objects
Unistellar Odyssey Professional evaluate: Cons
- Worth is steep for fanatics and amateurs
- Different options produce higher-quality astrophoto pictures
- Photo voltaic filter offered seperately
The place to purchase the Unistellar Odyssey Professional