Amateur cosmologists unable to escape the city or suburbs for a proper look at the stars are in for a treat, courtesy of Unistellar’s eQuinox 2 Smart Telescope. Advances in machine learning enable users in urban and suburban environments to filter out light pollution and observe everything from neighboring planets to deep-sky objects like galaxies, nebulae, and exoplanets.
The second-generation eVscope accomplishes this by eschewing an eyepiece and transmitting images directly to its connected app instead. Those decrying the omission should note the eQuinox 2’s approach is inspired by how the professionals do things at the big-boy mountaintop observatories.
The eQUinox 2 includes several other consumer-centric features intended to help budding Galileos find their way without a crash course in telescope operation. The mobile app catalogs over 5,000 celestial objects and can automatically orient the telescope based on what’s nearby. The whole thing weighs about 20 pounds when carried with its mount. It includes an 11-hour rechargeable battery and 64GB of built-in storage for go-anywhere astrology sessions.
An upgraded Sony IMX347 image sensor increases the telescope’s image output resolution by 27%, from 4.8 to 6.2 megapixels. Unistellar improved the field of view to 34×47 arcminutes as opposed to the original eVscope’s 27×37 arcminutes. Put another way? The Moon is now observable using this telescope, though it’ll require a future firmware upgrade to improve the focus. The eQuinox 2 is available to preorder for $2,499.
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