I often get asked, What happens when my smart telescopes’ tech goes obsolete? Or what if a better model pops on the market? What about that neat new offering from XXX? These questions are what this blog entry will try to address. But, I must give full disclosure right in the beginning. See the car in the image above? It’s a 1994 Toyota Corolla. That’s what I drive most of the time. I happen to love the car, it’s in amazing shape and even has fool-proof crank up windows. I’m not one to upgrade unnecessarily. Nevertheless, I do think we’re heading down new pathways with some of these smart telescopes. So, let me be a little more progressive in addressing these questions.
Purely refracting telescopes were an innovation started by Galileo. Telescopes were developed using mirrors by Newton. The basic physics behind pure optical telescopes like those hasn’t changed in nearly 400 years. Sure they’ve been perfected and developed dramatically, but simple optical tech hasn’t really changed.
Our smart telescopes, although reliant upon good optics, are dependent on three enabling hardware technologies only a few decades old:
Imaging chips that deliver low noise, RGB images in relatively high resolution. If it weren’t for cell phones, or auto and security cameras, these chips wouldn’t even exist at a reasonable price, if it all. Therefore we wouldn’t have smart scopes.
Cheap and small all-in-one computers like the Rasberry PI.
Finally — equally important — GPS satellite constellations and wifi enabled mobile phones.
Another factor at work in the dilemma we face is the legacy of amateur telescope making. Telescopes, even modest amateur ones, used to be very expensive during the 1920s and before. But when it became clear in the mid 20th Century that pushing 6 inch diameter glass disks round and round a 55 gallon barrel could get you a nice telescope, amateur telescope makers (ATMs) could basically begin acquiring telescopes by saving a few months of wages from a teenager’s summer job. In my lifetime amateurs have celebrated ATMs like the famous John Dobson who made his scopes despite a literal “vow of poverty.” So, most amateur astronomers have grown into their hobby as cheapskates and think that the smart telescopes are priced way too high already.
(As an aside, I met John twice in my career. He certainly was bigger than life. I distinctly remember his lariat handling skills, which he was quick to demonstrate. I never figured out how he was able to get his rope past airport security. FYI, his model of the universe also skirted the boundaries of scientific lawfulness too. I’ve spent a fraction of my career working on developing observatories to measure the CMB or Cosmic Microwave Background from Antarctica. I’m a card carrying member of the Relativistic Hot Big Bang party. John often spouted some really crazy unconventional cosmological theories. This latter tendency tended to dim his star in my eyes.)
Of course, even the telescopes spawned by Dobson can cost far more than our smart scopes. I’m thinking of an Obsession shown below. It’s easy to spend north of $10,000 on these things. The good news is they won’t really become obsolete, because Isaac Newton would have understood them. The bad news if you should own one is that they really need to be taken to dark sites to live up to their price tags. I’d dearly love one, but I don’t even have the room to store one and it certainly won’t fit into my Corolla.
I haven’t mentioned the software yet, either. It’s absolutely critical because the three enabling technologies are nothing without the software required to make them operate. Luckily, software can be updated relatively easy, provided the telescope manufacturers and software engineers don’t go bankrupt. (I feel that is an important consideration and evaluate carefully software and support before buying anything.) The essential technology required to build a Dobsonian telescope could be taught in a workshop and from a simple book. Almost anyone with the desire could pull that off. But very few of us can do the programming necessary to author the software necessary for these smart scopes much less our cell phones.
So, we’re left with smart telescopes that rely on high tech with version lifetimes measured in a few years. What are we to do? (N.B. Vaonis’s Hyperia is supposed to be straightforward to upgrade. In my world only Middle Eastern clients are likely to be able to afford one.)
But back to the reason most consider upgrading -- better images. Is the latest chip upgrade going to make me want to upgrade? Almost certainly no, because I believe these little scopes have been optimized to deal with typical atmospheric seeing and normal observing sites. They are also meant to be highly portable. Without going to much larger aperture, I don’t think much larger chips will be worth swapping in. And, if we had a great 10 inch, f/5 eVscope, for example…. well, it wouldn’t be portable. Let’s face it the focal lengths with current designs will never be long enough.
For those of you who really want to make significantly better images or go after good planetary photography, then it’s best to step away from smart scopes. There are some amazing astrophotographers who don’t balk at the prices because they invest at least as much in their elaborate rigs. They’re often not much different in price. I’m in awe with what they image and how well they engineer rigs like this one of Sara Wager. The astro photography she accomplishes is orders of magnitude better than what we manage to snap.
This heroic approach is not the same game smart telescope users are playing -- I think. For the most part we can afford at least the ones that are a few hundred dollars and many can afford the ones that cost a few thousand dollars. We have telescopes optimized for back packs. This is the audience market we’re in.
Think of your smart scope like your mobile phone or PC. You’ll eventually have to upgrade. But in the same “mental” breath, reflect on how much you use yours compared with most other high performance amateur telescopes. Since my two scopes can be set up together, focused and going within less than 20 minutes, they get used a lot. I live in a relatively horrible location with a very limited horizon, but I’m using mine weekly if the weather permits. And, if the weather gets cloudy, I can be inside within 10 minutes.
And I won’t upgrade until I really feel a scope can’t be fixed or there’s a real quantum jump that I can afford. Primarily this is because I still feel I have many, many new targets to chase. It’s an astrophotographic adventure I'm on. Let me finish by reflecting on photographic journeys.
The person in this picture is Galen Rowel, the most impressive outdoor photographer I’ve ever met. He and I went to Antarctica during the same summer season. We took the NSF’s safety training together. I asked him about my own photographic equipment at the time. He told me that the actual equipment didn’t really matter as much as the eye and skill of the photographer.
Galen also let me in on a technique that I also use with my smart telescopes because, being a Chicagoan, I operate them at their low temperature limits at times. When one is done shooting at sub freezing temperatures, one should make sure your camera is in a humidity proof bag before heading inside. Otherwise moisture will condense on places you don’t want it to condense.
Rowel died in a tragic plan crash in 2002, but his insistence on photography as a journey first and foremost has stayed with me. I can relate one astronomical "trip" of mine.
Back in 2020 just after receiving my eVscope, I embarked on a project El Camino de Messier de Campostella. It took me just about one year to image the entire Messier Catalog from my back alley way. It was like a Messier Marathon stretched out because I had to wait for each object to move into my narrow “window” between the garage and surrounding trees. I eventually then turned it into a poster:
Now my images aren’t all fantastic, but they were all done by me. As I was imaging I calculated the distance I would have traveled had I hopped between nebulae, clusters and galaxies. The total came to be 804,406,000 light years! What an expedition!
So for me, extra $$ might be useful for land trips. If I had an extra few thousand dollars, I might take one of my scopes to the southern hemisphere. Maybe not back to the South Pole, but Namibia or Australia might be just fine.
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P.S..... Well, I confess, I did just invest in a new shiny little piece of smart optics — Hestia. I really didn’t need it, but my thinking is that it would be handy when chasing eclipses and it won’t need to be upgraded, though my cell phone would… ;-)
P.S.P.S..... And, I was just made aware of an important smart scope sale. I'm trying not to really get into directly promoting one scope over another or even doing typical reviews, but if you don't have one, this seems like a very good price at $399. It's the ZWO-Seestar and it has a sale through the end of this month. They're not being delivered yet, I think. What makes it interesting is that it has almost the same specs as the Vespera, which I already have, but at a much lower price. Check it out: https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/product/zwo-seestar/
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Dobson Photo: Stacey David Severin
Sara Wager Astrophotography: https://www.swagastro.com/latest-dual-rig-adventure.html
I look at this tech the same as when home computers were new. We used to spend $1500 or more every 3-4 years to replace them because they became obsolete so quickly (in ‘80s & 90s dollars!). Now, they don’t need to be upgraded as often, and they cost less after inflation. Smartscopes will become obsolete quickly in the beginning, but their future replacements will probably cost less.