This is a Dwarf II, this is a C-Star S-50, and this is a Hestia, and these are all different flavors of smart telescopes. And in this video, I want to share my thoughts about using these for the upcoming Total Solar Eclipse. I'll put this video in the playlist for my main series on preparing for the eclipse just to make it more findable, but it's sort of a standalone video because it's going to focus on using these in particular. So if you're an owner of one of these, you'd probably be the most interested in this video. But a few reminders, this series is about shooting or photographing the Total Solar Eclipse on April 8th, 2024. In the other parts, I talk about getting to the path of totality and what to expect and the importance of backup plans and all kinds of other info that is relevant to the discussion here, but I'm not going to repeat all of it. And a quick disclosure first, these were all sent to me by the respective companies, Dwarf Lab, ZWO, Veyonus, but other than being able to evaluate these products for free, there are no other strings attached.  So let's start with the Dwarf II. This telescope has a unique finder in that the Wide Field camera system here is active simultaneously with the telephoto camera, and both have their own solar filters. So the wide angle view shows up as this picture and picture on the app, and that makes it really easy to get the sun centered in the telephoto view. The Dwarf does have tracking, which I found works quite well for keeping the sun roughly centered. And the solar filter mechanism here is magnetic. So that makes it really easy to remove for totality. I like that quite a lot. The Dwarf has manual controls over gain when exposure timing. So what I would suggest is find a combination of gain and shutter speed that gives you a properly exposed sun with this solar filter on, of course. And a properly exposed sun will be slightly brighter in the middle, darker on the limb, meaning the edges of the sun. And if there are sunspots, they should have nice contrast with the solar disc. And the sunspots will be also your best bet for focusing. And I haven't found autofocus works so well, you really probably want to manually focus on those sunspots. Now what do I suggest for totality? With a glass filter like this, the proper exposure with the filter for the partial phases of the clips should be approximately the same exposure as the images for the innermost corona shots. And from there, you could then just start doubling the exposure time once totality starts to manually bracket and capture other aspects of the corona, like the middle corona and their outward corona. So what I'd suggest if you want to try this is pretend it's the start of totality and start changing your shutter speed and taking pictures, a stop brighter, another stop brighter, and once you get to about five photos or a minute to a minute or two minutes in, stop. You'll stop looking at your phone, you'll enjoy the rest of totality just visually. Now to get all these timings in to prepare, we're going to use the Solar Eclipse Timer app. It's a $2 app. Once you buy the 2024 Eclipse data, Gordon the developer does not advise running anything else while using the Timer app. So the best solution there is to have one device for your dwarf and another device just for the Solar Eclipse Timer app. If you're going to the Eclipse with a friend or family member, maybe you could use their phone to run one or the other, but it would also work to just bring an old phone or tablet if you have one in a junk drawer or something that still can turn on. It doesn't need cell service to run the Solar Eclipse Timer app, it just needs the built-in GPS to work. But the key thing again is running the Timer app and the dwarf app on separate devices to be safe. Okay, so that's it for the dwarf onto the C-star. The C-star comes with this push-in solar filter and the C-star is actually really advanced in terms of finding the sun. It does a fairly methodical search and I found it, if it's properly leveled and you've calibrated the compass, it has a fairly high success rate of finding the sun, maybe 80% just on its own. But for that other 20% of failure rate where I'm not understanding why it's failing, what I'd suggest is bringing a little solar finder like my downspout clip here that you can just tape onto the C-star and that makes finding the sun manually really easy and then you would just use the on-screen controls to line it up. Once you've found the sun manually and you just tap this button to tell the C-star that the sun is now centered and it will start tracking and keeping the sun centered in view. Now the C-star doesn't give you much manual control in solar mode, not nearly as much as the dwarf does in terms of shutter speed and gain and things like that. So during totality, I'm guessing the best bet is you could just use this little plus minus exposure control to get a few different kinds of shots. It is pretty tight framing on the sun so I'm not sure if super long exposures would even look good because the corona would be cut off by the sides here. The main thing I would practice with the C-star is getting this solar filter off and on. I don't know if you could modify it or something because it's really, really tight on mine. Of course when you practice this don't actually have the C-star pointed at the sun pointed away you know just the blue sky is good to practice. And I'd actually consider if I was going to use this for the eclipse ditching the official C-star solar filter entirely and making some kind of custom DIY one that would fit over the whole front or something here. I think that would be a lot easier to get off and on. Other than that the tracking seems to work pretty well. It's a pretty hands-on experience in the sense that there is a time lapse mode but that's not what I would use because that creates a video automatically. I'm not seeing a way just to do an interval timer to take the photos. It seems that the only way to take stills in solar mode is to manually press the little shutter button. And just like with the dwarf I'd suggest having a separate device for the solar eclipse timer app so that you know when to remove and put back on the filter. And it also announces all of the other interesting features of the eclipse. And I'll say this a number of times because I think that you know it could be very easy and a real danger to just get lost in your phone with a smart telescope. Don't do it. You know when you to get this to work if you hear the solar eclipse timer app say max eclipse that means we're halfway through totality.  Put it down. Make the priority taking in totality visually for that last couple minutes. Because you're going to regret it if you just miss the whole event lost in your phone trying to take these pictures. Okay last up we have the Veonis Hestia. And this one doesn't have tracking like these two but it's also about half the cost of these. And it uses the camera on your smartphone to take the pictures. So your smartphone does have to be resting here on the Hestia. They suggest using the blue sky without the filter on to get the camera system on your phone lined up with the Hestia. Veonis also suggests focusing on something far away without the solar filter and then installing the solar filter so that you're roughly in focus. I tried that and it worked okay. There are two parts to the focus system. What can be controlled manually on the telescope and what can be controlled on your phone by focusing the lens on your phone.  So when you're trying to screw in the solar filter you can change the focus position. Also typically screw in filters are a no-no for the total solar eclipse in general because they can be very hard to take off. And this one I think is doubly so due to where it is on the telescope. So again just like with the C-Star I'd consider a custom DIY filter for this too. I think it'd be even easier to design than with the C-Star. But let's say you don't want to go that route. You want to use the solar filter that came with the Veonis Hestia to not mess up focus. What you need to do is very carefully grab the focus ring with one hand. Make sure it doesn't move while unscrewing the solar filter with your other hand. So in addition to that being a little bit complicated getting the solar filter off while maintaining correct focus, the Hestia also doesn't have tracking. So you'll need to keep panning this tripod head to keep the sun centered on your phone screen. And there's good news and bad news with that. The good news is Veonis included a very effective solar finder here that snaps onto the side. Very similar to my classic downspout clip that I've been talking about in this series. So that makes refinding the sun quite easy or finding it in the first place. The bad news is the included tripod is very shaky just due to the spindly legs. So with any wind it really is vibrating a lot. And usually the way to fix that is to put the tripod low to the ground so you're getting out of the wind. But in this case since we're manually tracking the sun you probably want to be standing not sitting on the ground. So but maybe the best thing would be just to bring a chair, make the Veonis low to the ground. Another option maybe would be to weight down the tripod. But I'm a little bit worried with this tripod of doing that because it seems quite flimsy. Another option is you can put the Veonis on a different tripod. So I'd suggest something like a Bogan 3001. They go for about 50 to 60 bucks on eBay. Okay back to the app experience. Once you're close to being in focus with the manual focus ring up here the app does have this cool feature with the camera on your phone where it takes a bunch of different pictures at slightly different focal positions and then you pick the one that has best focus and then it sets your camera's focus to that position. And from there you can manually set exposure with the shutter speed and ISO. I found that the auto exposure in sun mode was strangely just completely blown out. I don't know if they mean for it to be that way so just to help you find the sun maybe. Another thing that I thought was a little bit strange about the Hestia app is there doesn't seem to be any interval timer or video feature in solar mode in sun mode. So any photo that you take you just have to actually tap the shutter button it's a little bit similar to the C star in that respect. The C star though does have a video mode. However if they don't add that in an update to the app the Hestia can actually the Hestia physically can actually be used with any camera app on your phone. So I could do interval timing or video with nightcap camera which also gives me tons of options for exposure control and the format that it saves in and everything like that. Like with the first two I'd suggest having solar eclipse timer app on a separate device. I think it's even more important with this one since you're gonna have the phone tied up here on the telescope. And if you hear that max eclipse announcement remember just stop paying attention to this and enjoy totality visually. So those are all the tips I could think of for using these smart telescopes for the upcoming total solar eclipse but we now have a surprise special guest Sarah from Sarah Maths Astro YouTube channel. And I've been chatting with Sarah about this topic of using smart telescopes for months now and we're actually planning to meet up for the eclipse to do a possible follow-up to this video. And Sarah is ahead of me in preparation with these because she actually live streamed the annular solar eclipse last year using the C-Star and so here's Sarah with her perspective on using these smart telescopes for the total solar eclipse. Hi everyone and thank you so much to Nico for having me. It is true we have in fact been chatting about these three smart telescopes for a while now and have been testing them out and as Nico mentioned before this I was really fortunate to be able to test out the C-Star S-50 with some awesome folks over at ZWO during the last annular solar eclipse in October. We were right outside of Flagstaff, Arizona so we weren't necessarily in the full path of annularity but it was more like 84% of coverage but it was still super beautiful and really insightful in terms of kind of getting an understanding of how something like this might perform during the total solar eclipse. So with that being said the C-Star of course was really easy and quick to set up and everything that you would need basically comes in this little carrying case. As you can see here the field of view is relatively narrow compared to the other smart telescopes field of view so depending on what your goals are that could be more or less ideal. Of course with the focal length and center size giving us this much detail you'd see things such as Bailey's beads and the diamond ring a little bit better than with some of the other smart telescopes. However the trade-off is is that you're going to lose much more of the corona during totality which the amount of that you want to see really comes down to your own personal preference. In terms of power the C-Star S50 has a six hour battery life which would probably check the box for most people depending on how much you wanted to image before and after totality but I would still you know probably rely on some sort of external battery source just to be safe. I'm plan on testing out that six hour battery life using solar mode and some of the other imaging features just to kind of see how well that holds up and in kind of different heat conditions as well because this is black and it is going to get pretty hot so I'm going to test it with a shield as well. Speaking of power and switching over to the dwarf II that's kind of one of the main advantages that I see the dwarf II having in the case where you don't have access to external power I like how you can swap out interchangeable batteries. This is kind of huge because true portability is quite the luxury especially in conditions that are uncertain where you may need to relocate because of weather for example however if you were taking a time lapse using the time lapse mode feature within the dwarf lab app you would have to of course stop that session and then change out the battery and then restart a session which isn't awful but it's really nice knowing that you at least have a couple different options in terms of you know being able to change out the batteries or being able to just keep the dwarf II charged and hooked up to some power while you're imaging but yeah the dwarf II is super easy to set up and it's super portable and really easy to use and once you are able to get the sun in view it's able to track it for a long period of time which is really nice and you have lots of different imaging modes within the app you have the time lapse mode you have the picture mode you have the video mode and you also have astro mode that you could use for the solar eclipse all of those that I just said I would probably use astro mode if I was just taking single shots during the different contact phases of the solar eclipse because the images will be saved as tiff or as fit spiles depending on how much you care about raw data for post-processing purposes and of course I love that everything fits in this really cute little bag and when it comes to totality the fact that the magnetic filter holder here is really easy to remove and put back on is just super nice and it's less stressful I think now on to the Hestia but before I go any further I must disclose that Nico Carver from Nebula Photos did send me this unit but as always he has no say over the content of this video all right now with that out of the way let's talk about how the Hestia might be of benefit to us during the total solar eclipse so when I think about the Hestia the first thing that comes to mind is the fact that you're going to have to manually track the sun with this because there isn't a motorized tracker but it does make me think about the possibility of being able to you know mount it to some sort of low cost tracker like a sky watcher star adventurer mini or maybe even piggybacking it on to some other sort of telescope set up that you might have that's tracking the sun would I necessarily recommend that you buy a tracker for this probably not because that would probably cost just as much as getting either one of these but it is something interesting to keep in mind if you already have a tracker and for some reason you aren't using it I did see that bonus is going to be making a tracker later on at some point but I'm not sure how far along they are with that but basically for someone like myself who does want to you know bear witness to the total solar eclipse you know with their own eyes with you know certified solar glasses of course having to kind of worry about moving this Hestia around could kind of be a little bit of a headache but I can see the benefit if you are wanting to take you know photos at each contact for example and you want to reframe and kind of get the right exposure settings so yeah that's kind of a benefit but you aren't able to of course do kind of like the more traditional time lapses like you would be able to with the apps here I think another consideration you have to have with the Hestia is that the image quality is also going to come down to you know how good your camera phone is and you're also going to have to make sure that you have power for your phone and the little magnet area up here was kind of a little bit difficult to use so if you don't have a ton of dexterity in your hands that's something to consider as well here's the first image that I took with it it was rather windy and manually having to click the shutter button in the app could have added some shake but really the shakiness made it difficult to focus the image and that's kind of my most memorable experience about this whole thing now if I could only pick one of these to bring with me to the total solar eclipse I would pick different ones for different reasons I would pick the dwarf too for the fact that it has a wider field of view and you would get a lot of the corona which is really cool but almost as equally I really want to see a close-up shot of Bailey's beads and the diamond ring in which case that's why I would want to use the C star as 50 you would still be able to see a little bit of the corona but obviously not as much as the dwarf too but in terms of power either way I would be fine because I am choosing to bring external power sources to supply power to these devices which is going to eliminate a little bit of stress on my end because I would be stressing about that personally something that I think is really important to mention is that these smart telescope companies are very receptive to user feedback that's evidenced by the fact that we see lots of you know updates to the software app that's why we see a lot of updates to the firmware for the hardware we're seeing new capabilities all the time and we're also seeing you know these existing capabilities be approved upon so that's really cool and I think one of the inherent advantages of having hardware like this that is software enabled we're always able to give that feedback and the fact that they're so receptive is a very positive experience that I think is only going to continue to make these more and more successful what I think is really exciting about this upcoming total solar eclipse is that it's the first time that all of these devices will have been you know in existence and be able to be tested in that kind of context together so my plan at least as of now is to you know test how well they auto expose test how well they autofocus how well these two track the sun and keep everything centered up as well as how everything kind of compares to a more dedicated photography rig which is what I also plan on having up and going during the total solar eclipse as well so I am really excited and I hope you guys found this helpful and I'm very excited to meet up with you Niko