Vixen Polarie Star Tracker

Product Information

At Rother Valley Optics, one thing we pride ourselves on is customer service and quality of our equipment. When we test your telescope, we will ensure that it is of the highest quality otherwise, we will reject the scope under our strict quality control and test another model for your peace of mind. One of the main values to look at when testing a refractor is the Strehl ratio. The higher this number, the higher quality lens you have. At Rother Valley Optics, we will guarantee the highest possible Strehl ratio for your telescope. We will aim to provide 0.95 Strehl or higher on Takahashi, RVO Horizon, William Optics and many more! Generally, the higher the Strehl ratio, the lower the Astigmatism and Coma meaning a better image quality from your instrument. If you want to make 60+ sec expo with it, you need to fine tune polar alignment at every step when you set up – because almost impossible to strength them properly not to move under such weight.

We then attached the optional polar scope that enabled us to refine our polar alignment by visually aligning Polaris and two other stars against the image printed within the polar scope. Platform needed to be portable, i.e. fit in a bag or small case that could easily be carried on an aircraft and stowed in the overhead. Lights on the mount highlight which ‘Mode’ is selected (there is no LCD screen). This makes identification at night straightforward. The overall shape of the Vixen Polarie is reminiscent of a camera. My guess is that they designed it like that because it’s pitched to photographers rather than astronomers. Its main competitor looks much more like an equatorial mount, which, to some non-astronomers, can be intimidating. We are official Vixen UK optics dealers. We sell their complete range of telescopes, mounts and accessories including the vixen range of eyepieces and the fantastic Polarie Astrophotography Mount.Im not sure if my stuff is not faulty in some way – at least the fine tune knobs, but i needed to fine tune the alignment in every 5 shots. Which is of course exhausting. For deep sky astrophotography, you have to pimp the Vixen Polarie with the Counterbalance Upgrade Kit plus counterweight. Polar Alignment Polar alignment has long been a bugbear of astrophotographers, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. You can align the Polarie in a number of different ways. However, there is no method that’s simultaneously easy to use and especially accurate in the Southern Hemisphere. You just need practice.

There’s one feature that sets this mount apart: the GoTo (GT) capability. With this option, you can select a target on your smartphone – which can be stars, nebulae, or constellations – and the Star Adventurer GTi will find and automatically point your lens or telescope to the subject. This makes deep-sky astrophotography much easier, especially for beginners.Inspecting the images in post processing, we only had to exclude 10 frames from the batch taken with the 50mm lens due to elongated or deformed stars. Plan, do, review. Whenever I do anything new, it’s natural to want to improve. So, what were the lessons for next time? First, I would want better polar alignment. Each exposure had good round stars (at least as good as the lens was capable of). However, over a long sequence it drifted in the frame so I nearly lost my target. I think this would take some practice.