Unistellar Envision Preview: The Future of Stargazing
Augmented reality is coming to astronomy: the first ever Smart Binoculars. In this video, I go hands-on with the Unistellar Envision prototype, a pair of smart binoculars that blen...
The Space Koala Astrophotography by Luca Bartek
More about the Envision Binoculars: https://tidd.ly/3KnCXiH
What is that fenced in pond behind her? It just looks kinda odd, and why is it fenced in?
it's a water reservoir for the helicopters in case of a fire in the mountains
Is *The Future of Stargazing* really a pair of binos which you have to trash after a few years because the software is outdated? Maybe it is better to keep the peak finder and stargazing apps on the phone.
I think you do have a valid point - it's generally a concern with smart telescopes. However, in this particular case, say the company goes bankrupt and the software breaks, you still have a pair of functional binoculars
First, I must say your country is breathtakingly beautiful! I have a question. I noticed you use a Mac for your photo processing. The past few months I’ve been building two different Astro photography rigs. I find great interest in this hobby. i’m starting with zwo equipment. can you recommend a Mac computer that would support? The full process of astro photography images? thank you very much.Kenny Lukacs United States.
thank you! It is hard to give an answer because obviously the beefier the better when it comes to the computer. I use PixInsight for most of my astro work, which is currently sadly not optimized for the ARM processors (it still runs through Rosetta today). There are a few third-party plug-ins (like the suite of RC Astro) which run natively and you immediately see the difference. That said, if you're thinking of doing stacks of large numbers of images, memory is just as important as processing power. I use a Mac Studio (M1 Ultra) and a MacBook Pro (M1 Max) so each of these are older ones, but looking at other people's videos online I know they still outperform the average PC. Both of these have 64GB ram which is enough for my use case. I will most likely upgrade the MacBook when the new M5 ones come out.
I was one of the early users of their smart telescope, evscope. I was disappointed by their overpriced for sloppy software while Seestar was giving much better experience with constant feature upgrades with way less price. So, I feel another overpriced, bad software with no software upgrades in the future.
I did a review on the evscope/odyssey. I fully agree that the Seestar far outperforms it if your goal is astrophotography. If that's the goal, there's no point paying more for the Unistellar scope. It remains unique in providing a visual experience, though, and therefore I keep using it for all of my outreach events.
These look so cool ❤
Useful review - thank you! I’d just pre-ordered a pair and fortunately there’s nothing in your review that would have put me off. Expensive yes, but as a learning tool, the combination of being able to look up and learn how to find things is to me, a significant step forward.
now it's just a (very long) waiting game!
Thanks!
glad you liked it :)
If they used AI to help identify species of plants and animals, I'd definitely buy... but as it is, I will pass.
sounds like the Swarovski one is for you then! The envision will never do this as it is purely optical, it has no camera
@the_space_koalaWow I never heard of those. Thank you!
Very interesting, but the price would need to fall by an order of magnitude before I would even consider getting this.
here's to hoping this is the first of many such products - that should help the price, too. It was the same with smart scopes, they started at 4k, now you can get one for 350
Nice ✨️
Interesting, however my cell phone apps can do exactly the same thing, hmmm.
yes but then you're not looking at the sky :)
$1500 way too expensive!!! Good educational tool when used in a bottle 2 sky but, as a daily driver totally pointless for most people in urban areas as you will not be able to see what the AR is actually providing. Total disappointment for a any newbie expecting to see galaxies in bortle >6 sky
My concern is - When used in a light polluted city with Bortle 8/9 night sky, will the bino actually see anything?
these are traditional (optical) binos so you would see exactly as much as you do with a regular pair of the same size. The overlay would still work as that is based on different sensors - they don't need to see the stars
Very nice report! Thank you Luca!
Interesting, thanks. You shoot from the best location.
Hi, thanks for the video. It’s an interesting concept, but for astronomical observation, I would prefer bigger optics. I have 20 x 80 binoculars, which seem about right to me.
Mine are 10x42 so these were an upgrade compared to that 😁 at 20x you need a tripod I presume?
@the_space_koalaYes, a tripod is definitely useful!
New products always have bugs. Takes some time to clear them out.
For that price I would prefer an Astrophotography function with a high performance deep sky sensor like an IMX533 or IMX585 or an IMx662 color sensor. Decent photography binoculars, I know of none. Most seem to fall in toy category.
I'm not even aware of any astrophotography binoculars. I'm sure someone will come out with a 2-display version of the Pegasus SmartEye one of these days :D Then again I believe the target audience is probably very different, this device is for visualists
I can see these being very useful for star parties.. especially for those that are focused on outreach in light polluted skies. The price point is actually not too bad. One can easily spend that much on high end binoculars. What did you think of the optical quality? How does it compare to other binoculars you have used for star gazing?
I agree on its use for outreach events, I still think that they're not necessarily the best for light polluted skies - EAA wins there IMO. My regular 10x42 stabilized Canon binos cost about the same so I agree about the price point. Decent optics with a little extra (be it stabilization or the whole AR thing) cost money. I only had a limited amount of time to test and the main focus was the AR functionality. That said I made it a point to focus on the stars which were nice and sharp throughout. I didn't notice any chromatism, however, it would've been much better if the Moon had been up to check that properly. I expect to receive a pair next year for testing and I'll have ample time to do all sorts of experiments prior to doing an actual review