Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i Pro Pack – Motorized Dslr Night Sky Tracker Equatorial Mount for Portable Nightscapes, Time-Lapse and Panoramas – Wi-Fi App Camera Control – Long Exposure Imaging

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Rotating the control knob, you can select a range of presets, which include the usual ‘Lunar’, ‘Solar’ or ‘Sidereal’ options, but there is now an interesting ‘App’ addition. My heaviest configuration includes a 300mm lens, the camera, and a guiding system built around the ZWO Asiair.

By adding an in-built Wi-Fi adaptor, Sky-Watcher has brought the Star Adventurer into the 21st century. Many people are familiar with Wi-Fi control of gadgets and this is appealing to astrophotographers who enjoy using a lightweight and portable mount and controlling it with a smartphone. Astrophotography is a beautiful, rewarding, and educational hobby. But it can be frustrating and needlessly expensive if you don’t do your homework and let the “Gear Acquisition Syndrome” get you. Then, it’s a matter of moving the azimuth controls from side to side to place the north star in the correct position. everything feels high quality and sturdy. The dials are all big and can see they would be easy to use even with gloves A good polar alignment is crucial in astrophotography, as it allows you to expose longer while keeping the stars round.

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Let’s say you are imaging at Midnight October 31st, in Time Zone 0 in Greenwich (LSTM=0°), and that you want to image the Pleiades. When you choose the tripod for your Star Adventurer, prefer beefy ones, with maximum payload well above the actual weight of the equipment you will put on it. This is the proper way to proceed to ensure the best results if you are after deep sky astrophotography (nebulae, galaxies, etc.). The base of the mount and the connection to the tripod are solid and secure. I ran into a small issue with a stiff right Azimuth knob out of the box, but I took it all the way out, re-threaded it in straight and it’s working flawlessly now. Controller Via Wi-Fi using free SynScan App for iOS and Android devices or Synscan Hand Controller (available separately)

If you do that, remember to mount the cover on the polar scope, to avoid having the battery cover, and your precious phone with it, fall off the mount 😉 Manually adjusting the alt/az bolts on the mount to line up Polaris in the correct spot only takes a minute. This skill will come in handy the next time you set up in a new, dark sky location with minimal gear (trust me). The mount, being very portable and very easy to transport, I would've expected something like a dedicated Skywatcher GTI travel case or soft bag for it, as the box where the mount is stored is just a normal cardboard box, so I'm hoping Skywatcher would make such product, has I can see this mount being very popular.I ran the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer GTi at the Cherry Springs Star Party in 2023, and captured one of my favorite deep-sky images of all time. Because with the naked eye, you can only see Polaris when you look in that direction, it is fairly easy to center the North Star in the field of view of your awesome DIY Pole Finder.

In the same way, the same app can tell you the current right ascension and declination for the Heart Nebula: 02h 35m 09s and +61º 31’ 02”, respectively. The tripod I use is the Manfrotto Element Big Traveller, which you can buy here. The great thing about this mount is that it comes with a very sturdy ball head, which you can mount on directly on to the Star Adventurer with the ball head adapter for wide-field Milky Way shots. The payload capacity for this mount is 8kg, which should be more than you’ll ever need as the Star Adventurer payload capacity is 5kg.

SynScan App Database: Total 10,000+ Objects. Deep Sky Objects: 10759, including Messier, NGC, IC, Caldwell Catalogues, Named DSOs, Named Stars: 305, Double Stars: 55, Solar system objects: 7 planets, Sun , Moon. (Unlimited objects when working with a 3rd party planetarium software). The differences between the two mounts lie in the hardware, fit and finish, and overall user experience in the dark. The included adapter is handy to have but I feel that some owners will wonder why the wedge will not fit on their ¼” thread tripod if they haven’t removed it. We have confirmed that the current version of SynScan App, SynScan Pro App and SAM Console App on the Google Play are not compatible with Android 11. We have finished the development of new version of these apps which can work with Android 11, but due to technical issues, we cannot release the updates on Google Play. Unfortunately, this situation might last several months. Consider my location. Since I live in Brussels, I am in GMT+1. Therefore, my LSTM is +1*15°=15° of longitude East.