Vaonis Vespera Pro smart telescope

Swift, effortless and seriously capable - this scope makes every session count

- CHARLOTTE DANIELS

Smart telescopes have opened a new, accessible avenue for newcomers to astronomy, providing an all-in-one platform for capturing those first stellar photons. The Vaonis Vespera Pro is the latest model in the Vespera line and builds on the features of its predecessor, the Vespera II.

While the aperture and focal length are the same, the Vespera Pro boasts the larger Sony IMX676 colour sensor, which offers 12.5MP resolution versus the Vespera II's 8.3MP. The pixel size of 2µm means a sampling rate of 1.6 arcseconds per pixel, which is perfect for average seeing conditions, so we were keen to see what details we could capture.

We received the Cosmic Bundle, which meant that in addition to the hard case and tripod that come as standard, we also received a Vaonis dual-band filter and CLS light-pollution filter. Vaonis also sent us its solar filter, which does not come as part of the Cosmic Bundle but can be purchased separately.

The Vespera Pro's design couldn't be simpler: a single button and port on a sleek white unit. Once we'd assembled the tripod and screwed it into the unit's base, we downloaded the Singularity app (available for iOS and Android) and were ready to go.

The summer days didn't disappoint and we were soon granted an opportunity to use the solar filter. Bringing the Sun into the Vespera Pro's field of view was easy: after opening the arm, we selected Solar Mode in the app and popped the filter on before following prompts to level and aim the Vespera Pro. It then effortlessly slewed to and centred our nearest star and we captured some lovely sunspot details. At the time of review, via the app we could only save solar images as JPEGs; for solar and lunar imaging, TIFF files weren't available during our review. We felt this would be beneficial when it comes to stacking in processing software. We'd love to see video imaging as an option in future, to really boost details.

To the Moon and beyond