101 replies to this topic

[Peter Besenbruch]

I picked up a used Vespera II from B&H. Naturally, it wouldn't boot. Instead it flashed the dreaded four red flashes and shut down. Mailing stuff to and from Hawaii is always fun, but eventually I received another one, this time a new one (yes I paid extra for it).

 

I got to use it last night, and here are some initial reactions. The sucker is sloooow! Slow to initialize, slow to photograph (the f2.2 Origin spoils a person), slow to shut down, slow to transfer files.

 

Vaonis loves yellow. Everything comes out grossly yellow. ZWO likes green for the Seestar 50, red for the S30. Celestron is relatively neutral.

 

The Singularity app doesn't phone home much, according to Exodus Privacy, a good thing, and in stark contrast to Celestron's and ZWO's apps. Singularity lacks any form of a meaningful atlas. This makes mosaic framing harder than it needs to be.

 

Naturally, I went straight to advanced mode and tried a mosaic of the M81 region. I stopped at 540 images, as the clouds were coming in. Later views of the directory showed 691 images, implying either a relatively high rejection rate, or the Vespera counts differently when taking mosaics.

 

Anyway, here it is, taken from a Bortle 5 back yard, further messed up by vog. I processed the TIFF file with GraXpert and GIMP. GraXpert for a badly needed gradient correction and initial denoise, and GIMP for the rest, including extra attention to four of the galaxies in the image.

 

Edited by Peter Besenbruch, 26 March 2025 - 03:59 PM.

[Infiniumguy]

Peter, Glad you finally got a V2 that works. What a hassle and I bet shipping to Hawaii is an added inconvenience.

My only previous experience was with the Dwarf 3. It worked, but I found the application to be cumbersome to use and the tracking easily delivered some elongation in the stars. Stacking with PI Subframe Stacker helped eliminate the bad ones and get to a decent .xisf file that I then processed in PI.

I’ve not noticed a strong color cast, but I’ll look closer now based upon your comments.

I have at times seen a strong gradient, but I attributed that mostly to extraneous lights on neighbors houses. I’ll look closer at that too.

I would guess the V2 is slow and compared to the Origin I bet it is very slow. Still, I’m getting decent images and my stars are mostly very nicely round. Happy about that.

The mosaic mode does take longer and like you I’m disappointed with the Atlas. Gosh, I wish Vaonis would update that with real Astro images like Stellarium.

Overall, I like Singularity. It’s been a joy compared to the Dwarf 3. I do wish they’d make it easy to plan a mosaic. Maybe in manual mode that is easy. I haven’t tried that yet, but I will soon.

I couldn’t tell on your image, but it didn’t seem in focus. Maybe it’s a resolution of the pic in CN’s. I’ve been very happy with focus.

I look forward to more images from you.
Dan

[Peter Besenbruch]

I couldn’t tell on your image, but it didn’t seem in focus. Maybe it’s a resolution of the pic in CN’s. I’ve been very happy with focus.

The image on my hard drive is sharper.It was a relatively enormous image, so Cloudy Nights did do a bit of downsizing.

Edited by Peter Besenbruch, 26 March 2025 - 05:54 PM.

[Infiniumguy]

Excellent. Glad to hear that. I’m actually very impressed with the tracking and focusing on the V2. With the 50mm lens it’s far slower than an origin, but cost follows glass diameter by an exponential I expect.

For now I’m only using the stacked .TIFF file. When I get a bit more experience and more likely when I can escape to darker skies, I’ll stack .Fits and try and get the best I can out of the telescope.

[Peter Besenbruch]

For now I’m only using the stacked .TIFF file. When I get a bit more experience and more likely when I can escape to darker skies, I’ll stack .Fits and try and get the best I can out of the telescope.

Looking more closely at the image, there is a bit of asymmetric blur on the stars. I'll try again tonight, and see what happens. When you pick yours up, does it sound like something is loose in there?

[Infiniumguy]

Peter,

 

Good morning. I have not noticed the asymmetry in the stars although as I can say that when I use BlurXterminator in PI it does make minor improvements which I like. Mostly that is making stars smaller and not improving any asymmetry. 

 

I just picked up and turned my V 2 upside down. I am not hearing anything loose in it. Dang. You've had to many difficulties with Vaonis. I would reach out to Vaonis support. I confess one of the deciding factors for me was when Vaonis moved the warranty to 3 years. Good luck figuring it out.

 

Dan

[Infiniumguy]

M81 Bode's Galaxy, M82 Cigar Galaxy, 5 hours, 17 minutes total integration. Stacked .TIFF right out of the V2, 1902 10-sec subs. Bortle 5, Vespera 2. It does rather amaze me how powerful the post processing tools are. I used PixInsight, Photoshop and finished in Lightroom Classic. 

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[Peter Besenbruch]

I just picked up and turned my V 2 upside down. I am not hearing anything loose in it. Dang. You've had to many difficulties with Vaonis. I would reach out to Vaonis support. I confess one of the deciding factors for me was when Vaonis moved the warranty to 3 years. Good luck figuring it out.

Last night I took a test image of M41. Again the asymmetric blur. The processing used was a basic stretch. I have an RMA from B&H.

[Infiniumguy]

Peter, real bummer. You might message GSBass on the top of the Smart Telescope thread and maybe send him an image or else post for all of us to see of the unprocessed stars. I’m bummed about your experience. Mine has been very good so far. Sending it back to B&H is a good call IMHO. Better to deal with it than be frustrated every time you take it out. Good luck. Please let us know on the forum how it resolves.

[Which one is Polaris]

Here is IC 443 Jellyfish Nebula with my Vespera II.
I used the Standard (non-mosaic) mode, with Dither.
965 x 10s subs (2h 40m Integration) in 3h 10m
total elapsed time, approx. 84% auto retention.
It was clear well above the horizon, misty lower down, not windy, no moon, countryside Bortle 4 skies, around 7° C, 90% humidity.
All my equipment was very wet. The Vespera II auto heater kept the lens completely clear.
I saved the FITS and processed all of them in Siril until stretched, then GraXpert to Denoise, final tweaks in Affinity.

Edited by Which one is Polaris, 29 March 2025 - 03:16 AM.

[Infiniumguy]

Very nice. I was not aware that the Vespera 2 has a heater. I thought that was part of the Vespera Pro. Please verify if yours has a dew heater. Thanks.

[bradhaak]

The Vespera 2 has a dew heater, but it's enabled and controlled by the optional Hygrometer Sensor (available from Vaonis). The hygrometer comes installed in the Vespera Pro. So all you have to do is buy it, install it, and your Vespera 2 will have a dew heater.

[Infiniumguy]

I’m absolutely did not know it had the heater. I was aware the hygrometer needed to be added. That’s great although I live in a very dry environment. Colorado. Not much problem here with dew. Friend lives in Houston. Awful there. 

Edited by Infiniumguy, 29 March 2025 - 07:30 AM.

[Which one is Polaris]

Yup. As Bradhaak says. I bought the Hygrometer when I bought the Vespera II. Easy to fit. Works very well, automatically. As I use a Power Bank 10,000 mAh always, I never get close to running out of juice

Edited by Which one is Polaris, 29 March 2025 - 03:14 AM.

[Peter Besenbruch]

My second Vespera II is off to the vender, like the first one. I asked for an exchange.

[Peter Besenbruch]

I received my third Vespera II yesterday. Two things: It's cloudy. It wouldn't charge or start up the way it was supposed to in the instructions.

 

No white flashes when starting, only on shut-down. That said, I did see the Vespera WiFi access point, so I connected to it. As it showed 45% charge, I plugged it in. Nothing. I tried different chargers and cables. Nothing.

 

I blew hard into the USB port and tried again, and charging started. I updated the firmware and told it to initialize. The arm opened and initialization failed (it was late afternoon and cloudy). It's still cloudy, and will be the next few nights. We'll see what happens...

[Peter Besenbruch]

Update on the USB port. It only charges with the USB-C cable in a specific configuration. Flip it around and it just sits there. Third Vespera in a row that's defective. Too bad as well, as the optics are decent.

[Infiniumguy]

Peter,
Gosh. I’m without much words. I’m guessing you tried a different cable. Good luck.
Dan

[Peter Besenbruch]

Yes, and a different charger.

[Peter Besenbruch]

Question for anyone out there. I tried the Vespera II with the nebula filter. It didn't recognize the filter, and tried to continue with 10 second exposures. As a result the Origin, imaging next to it, collected over ten frames for everyone to Vespera stacked. Is there something I am missing? Is there a setting in software I have to find? I thought the recognition of the filter was automatic.

[Infiniumguy]

Peter,
I only have a solar filter. It recognizes it when I power up and initialize the V2. I install it before I turn on the V2. I do not know how it recognizes if you install after turn on.
Dan

[Peter Besenbruch]

That's how I did it as well. I installed and powered up.

[bradhaak]

Filter recognition is automatic with Vaonis Vespera filters. There's a resistor in each filter that tells the Vespera which one (if any) is installed, and it acts appropriately. It doesn't change the exposure time for any of them (that I have ever noticed), just the way the image is internally processed. You can check it in telescope status screen. At the bottom of the telescope image, it will say if there's a filter detects. This is also where you can see the current temperature and humidity if you have the Hygrometer Sensor installed (the Pro comes with it preinstalled).

 

You can switch filters at any time during a session. Actually, I've never tried to do it during a capture, so I'm not going to guarantee that will work.

[Peter Besenbruch]

Filter recognition is automatic with Vaonis Vespera filters. There's a resistor in each filter that tells the Vespera which one (if any) is installed, and it acts appropriately. It doesn't change the exposure time for any of them (that I have ever noticed), just the way the image is internally processed. You can check it in telescope status screen. At the bottom of the telescope image, it will say if there's a filter detects. This is also where you can see the current temperature and humidity if you have the Hygrometer Sensor installed (the Pro comes with it preinstalled).

 

You can switch filters at any time during a session. Actually, I've never tried to do it during a capture, so I'm not going to guarantee that will work.

Thanks. I didn't see a filter indication at the bottom of the screen. I could tell that for every ten to fifteen images that the Origin cranked out, the Vespera would produce one.

[Peter Besenbruch]

Fighting the Vespera II still. 64 minute exposure of the Rosette in mosaic mode. Earlier tries with the nebula filter failed, so this is with no filter. This forced a separate processing of the nebula (using some extreme measures) and the stars. Taken in my Bortle 5 yard, but with a moon one day past full. GraXpert for initial denoising and gradient removal. Siril to handle the star removal, and GIMP to do the heavy lifting.

 

Edited by Peter Besenbruch, 15 April 2025 - 05:05 PM.