French company Vaonis unveiled a fully automated camera telescope, Stellina. The product is designed to allow amateur astrophotographers to easily capture beautiful images of the night sky without the need for regular manual control or extensive astrophotography knowledge.
Vaonis is preparing to launch a new feature via software update in 2021 and it recently tested the feature by capturing a massive 546MP panorama of a group of nebulae. The new feature is ‘Automatic Mosaic-ing’ and it will take advantage of Stellina’s image stacking and image stitching technologies. This feature will let you create ultra-high-resolution panoramas of the night sky without you needing to do anything manually.
The image, shown via the screenshot below, was captured with the new feature by Vaonis Technical Director, Gilles Krebs. The image shows, from left to right, the Running Chicken, Statue of Liberty and Carina nebulae. These nebulae are about 7,000 light-years away. The image is comprised of 208,000 total photos, stacked into 168 images and then stitched together into a 546MP panorama. The panorama represents 336 hours of total exposure time. You can explore the full-size image by clicking this link.
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| Image credit: Vaonis |
The Vaonis Stellina is designed to be easy to use and its intelligent, smart design allows the user to easily set up and use the device. DPReview contributor and astronomer Jose Francisco Salgado wrote an excellent review of Stellina. Salgado says, ‘The Stellina is a well-thought out smart telescope. It can easily be transported from one location to another and setting it up cannot be more simple.’ He continues, ‘…if you want a fun-to-use, click-and-shoot device that will work for you while you relax and enjoy the night sky then the Stellina is right for you!’ You can learn some of the basics of Stellina in Vaonis’s video below.
If you’d like to learn more about purchasing the Vaonis Stellina, you can head to Vaonis’s website. Vaonis has also begun teasing a brand new product that they ‘believe will change astronomy.’ The Stellina is already a compact device considering its capabilities, but the new teased product will be even smaller. It will be fully unveiled on Kickstarter on October 1. If you’d like to sign up for alerts or learn more about the new product, click here.
