1) Vespera now comes without a charger or a cable to charge. As per the card in the box that is some kind of EU registration. Not that I expected and not what I saw in the unboxing videos. The seller of the Vespera should make it clear and offer you to buy a charger if you want/need one. So I went to a store and grabbed one that was rated 30 watts (what the Vespera requires) only to discover, obviously at home, that it does not work because the cable I had is old and not a ‘PD’ compatible. So back to the store again and this time I got the right charger and the cable that was 30w and ‘PD’ compatible and the issue was solved.
2) If you lice in a light polluted place you will eventually succumb and buy at least CLS filter or like me you but both CLS and Dual Band. These are pricey so factor the price into your purchase decision. Filters are nice but the boxes they come in are super cheaply made, no padding, filters barely fit. Not that convenient to use so I am shopping for a better box/pouches/cases…
3) The battery goest from 100% to 85% in the 1st 5 mins of use during the initialization process. I think the power management should be recalibrated a bit or reporting should be improved. Yes, the initialization process is somewhat energy hungry but it does not (or should not) take 15% of the charge. If later I keep pointing the scope to the different targets, open and close the arm, etc: the battery is NOT loosing another 15% but maybe 5%. So I am not sure why the 1st 5 mins is so energy depleting. Maybe the autofocus is to blame. But to the end user immediate drop to 85% is a bit scary: it send a message that something is wrong and the battery will be empty in 20 mins! Hence I think the Vionis should recalibrate the reporting and ‘hide’ the initial 15% drop and report it as 5% for example and just distribute the remaining charge % over the next few hours.
4) Using hygrometer sensor (even if the heater is not engaged) takes a bit of power. Given I live in a very humid environment I bought the sensor. It works. I see the temperature and humidity but I do NOT see if the dew point was ever reached and the heater was activated. The Vionis site is wage: they say that the heater will be activated if the temperature is new the dew point: near how much? No clue. Will the app show the heater is on somewhere?
5) all the online videos showed a bubble level that is magnetically attached to the charging socket. Not any more with the Vespera 2. I got a different model that is placed between the tripod and the scope. Works well but eventually I got a better leveler that you can use to adjust the scope without the need to play with the tripod’s legs.
6) The Dual Band filter blocks a lot of light so you may face the problem that the scope is failing to initialize with the filter (CLS filter does not cause this for me). Specifically it fails to adjust the focus. Vionis site mentions that it is safe to initialize w/o the filter and then install the filter before you start the observation. It will not impact the focus (assuming you install the filter carefully and will not move the scope).
7) Mosaic mode is slow and power hungry. Way slower than the regular mode so prepare to wait longer if you want bigger picture. It is also appears that mosaic mode drains the battery faster so do not expect 4h of operation in mosaic mode. I see about 2.5h based on my very preliminary testing (with a hygrometer sensor and a Dual Band filter and a maximum size mosaic frame).
8) The blue light around the power sensor is bright! And it stays on while the unit is working. I wish the Vionis allowed us to dim it or to turn it off during operation. If you plan on leaving the unit unattended at night and someone is passing by that person will clearly see this blinking bright interesting light. You may want to consider putting something to cover it.
9) If you use smaller frame vs larger frame you still end up with the same magnification. Let’s say a galaxy is 100 by 100 pixels in a tiff image that the scope produces. It will be 100 by 100 no matter how small or large frame you select for the observation. To know in advance how big the main subject will be you can look up it’s apparent size in the Singularity app, convert it to arcsecconds and divide by 2.39 (pixel resolution of the Vespera 2). For example, Pinwheel galaxy is 22’0 (22 arc-minutes and 0 seconds) or 1320 arcsecconds. In the photo it will have a size of 552 pixes wide. Not that big but not too small. There are a lot of deep space objects that are way smaller and you get less than 109 pixels wide in the file. But there are big objects as well that will take the whole frame.
10) You can get an auto processed Jpeg from the scope and be done. The quality of such jpeg is quite decent. I used to do a lot of non-astro image processing in Photoshop and LightRoom and know a thing or two so I was expecting to easily beat the ‘auto processed’ jpeg and produce a better result but…. I failed. Apparently the astro image processing has a lot of nuances and specialized tools that I am still learning. After 2 weeks I think finally can beat the generalized algorithm. 😃 I chose not to stack individual images (hard for mosaic images) and take the stacked Tiff and post process it. For now this seems the best option for me.
11) If your observation session fails and you get a message ‘make sure the instrument can move freely’ do not get spooked: it is clouds or trees or something else that now blocks the target for too long and the scope timed out.
That is my list. The rest was just fine. Device works well, app works well. Images are very good.
I hope this helps someone.
Edited by BrickInTheSky, 29 May 2025 - 06:02 PM.