There’s no eyepiece on Stellina: instead, images are focused onto an electronic imager and sent via wireless connection to your smartphone or tablet. The heart of the Stellina telescope system is an 80mm aperture, apochromatic doublet refractor/reflector hybrid with a nasmyth focus and an f/5 focal length, providing a generous field of view nearly one degree square, suitable for deep-sky imaging.

After half a century in amateur astronomy, this is the very first telescope we’ve used that worked on the first night as advertised, straight out of the box. You know that when your ‘scope is pointed at the ground, for example, that some further troubleshooting is due. All had their place… but weren’t quite user friendly, often requiring the user to troubleshoot polar alignment, check and recheck the mount leveling and balance, and manually calibrate the alignment in order to coax the telescope to its target. We’ve used and built telescopes of all types, and survived through every iteration of ‘GoTo’ telescopes, from the earliest models in the 1990s to modern GPS-equipped telescopes. We recently had a chance to put Vaonis’ Stellina ‘smart telescope’ through its paces, and we’re intrigued at the glimpse it provides of the future of observational astronomy. Now, a new breed of smart telescopes is set to take users past these hurdles, and get them out under the night sky.

Telescope stellarium