Celestron Origin Smart Telescope - First Impressions (EAA, Astrophotography, Research)

hey everyone this is Cody and today I'm going to be bringing you my thoughts on the Celestron origin smart telescope now I'm sure there's been dozens of videos talking about preim questions on this telescope before it's been released and I'm going to add to those videos here with my own version uh but I think I'll be able to bring some unique insights that might not have been considered so far additionally I reached out to some of my friends and contacts at Celestron and I'm really grateful for them because they're going to let me use a lot of the animation and clips from their YouTube video which is very well done i' highly recommend checking it out if you haven't uh but the graphics and animations in their video are just awesome so I'm going to be pulling a lot of content from Celestron today for this video as I discussed the origin and and some aspects that might make it very unique so with that said let's go ahead and jump into the the video so first things first obviously the Celestron origin uses a 6-in rasa and I am absolutely thrilled about that because the rasa is my favorite telescope I have I have the ad in rasa as you know and I use it all the time it's definitely the telescope that's got the most use out of my entire collection and so the 6-in rasa being even smaller and lighter is going to fit absolutely perfectly on a fork Mount And if you're using a fork Mount you need to take short exposure so you avoid field rotation the 6-in RASS is going to allow you to take short exposures and just be an absolutely awesome scope one thing I was kind of thinking about with the 6 in rasa is at f2 let's square that number and make it four let's take a 6in schmit C grain that's F10 and square that number that's 100 100 divided 4 is 25 so the 6 in rasa is going to be 20 time 25 times faster than a 6 inmi cigra so a 10-second exposure on the 6inch rasa would take you 250 seconds on a 6in F10 schmit Crain that is incredibly fast so not only is the 6 inch rasa much better in terms of gathering speed than a F10 Schmid Crain but compared to the human eye you know when you're behind an eye piece you're not picking up light at all so as I was talking to Celestron about this video they really said that the human eye is the weak point of the system when it comes to observing and that's absolutely true so I don't think this telescope is designed as much to be a astrop photography telescope as it is to kind of replace the the eyepiece model of observing and as we take undergraduates out and do star parties with them at my University you know you'll show them a Galaxy and it's a tiny little smudge and they're just not as interested in it I know a lot of the older astronomers loved the the eyepiece it's kind of what they grew up with um but newer astronomers love screen time right um and so I think this is going to drastically change CH astronomy and make it fun for people that eyepiece observing is not as exciting for them now the moon behind an eyepiece still amazing you know the planets amazing even a lot of those globular clusters and open clusters are really cool through the eyepiece but when you start getting into nebuli and galaxies and stuff like that well that's when a lot of our undergraduate students start to lose interest and we actually picked up two smart telescopes and they really flock to those so I think the Celestron uh origin is going to really increase the market for smart telescopes because Celestron went all out on this thing the 6inch rasa is an absolutely perfect choice for a smart telescope and it's a bold choice too it's it's big it's fast and it's a it's going to be awesome so great choice from Celestron integrating the 6in rasa into the origin the Imaging sensor that Celestron went with is the Sony IMX 178 now this is a Simo sensor back lit starvis techn techology so it's going to be quite sensitive and it has small pixel sizes so the pixels are 2.4 microns by 2.4 microns so quite small you're going to get high resolution images out of the rasa 6 now as I mentioned I've used the rasa 8 for years and I use the uh Sony IMX 183 sensor which also has those same pixel sizes and it always gives me great resolution so I think it was a good choice from Celestron to pick a sensor that has small pixels to give you that resolution but it's also quite sensitive because you're going to be taking a lot of exposures and stacking those images I'm absolutely thrilled that Celestron did not Overlook allowing us to use one and a/4 inch and 2 in filters that's a great addition to the origin because most of us live in areas of high concentrated light pollution it's just a fact of life these days and so being able to incorporate light pollution filters or other styles of filter into the rasa 6 for the origin is going to be a great addition so very happy that Celestron included that too now Celestron has come out with some really cool technology over the years from Star sense to the Focus motor more recently the do heater rings and the do shields that kind of have your cable management built in all of that is included on the origin to make it a true smart telescope so the corrector plate has the do heater ring around it so you know if you start to get condensation on your corrector plate that's going to kick on and start to uh take care of that issue which is awesome the do Shield is is going to help prevent that a little bit but block stray light and also give you cable management for your camera so you have a nice compact setup and then at the rear obviously give you the full computer for all the AI processing and running the star Sense Technology to align the telescope the whole system but the real big thing for me at that back end is that the files can go on a flash drive I will talk a little bit more about why that's so important in a little bit and you also have a Focus motor so at f2 or f2.2 or whatever the 6in rasa is the focal plane is going to be very very small and so a Focus motor is absolutely critical for getting you the best focus and again this is a true smart telescope you shouldn't be out there focusing your telescope so Celestron took that ability away from you integrated a Focus motor and it's going to do it all which is I think so nice so overall the telescope incorporates a ton of technology that Celestron has come out with over the years into one great package the app looks incredibly simple to use just like Celestron Sky portal or Sky Safari uh it's going to be very easy to use and the coolest part about it I think is that it does processing while you're Imaging so you're basically just stacking photos and photos and having these AI processes but Celestron also included a way for you to do some basic processing in the app as well so a lot of insight went into making this app powerful but also simple which I like so anyone that's new to astronomy or as photography or anything like this can buy an origin and have basic processing control and kind of get their feet wet before they dive into more advanced image processing which I think is a really great touch it also will show new astronomers how important signal to noise ratio is so as we start stacking those images you're going to see the quality improve continuously throughout your your Imaging session so I think this is going to be a great way to engage people is with the app a well-designed app goes a long way these days especially the younger astronomers I'm sure can probably attest to that so when you have a smart telescope that's simple to use with a simple app this is going to be pretty successful I think so great job from Celestron and just keeping things simple the mount is based on the Celestron Evolution Mount which is an excellent Mount has a lithium iron phosphate battery and what's cool is it's got clutches so if you want to change the orientation of your origin for storage or taking it down you can just undo the clutches move things how you want and redo them uh the other cool part about the evolution Mount obviously you have full Wi-Fi control there and the internals are built like a tank so the evolution is Rock Solid you're also going to get a stable tripod with the origin and also has the tabletop ability as well so again a lot of modularity and this whole system is pretty lightweight it will break down into you know your tripod your Mountain your your telescope and so traveling with the origin is going to be simple and it's even going to be more simple when you get to your travel site you just set it up and it aligns itself and you're Off to the Races so again this thing is is pretty awesome Celestron covered this information a lot more in depth than I did but I want to talk about some of the applications of the origin now so one area I think origin will be unique is in research so I teach astronomy at my local University and undergraduate research can be challenging because students have to learn all the setup for a telescope how to Bal balance it how to pull align it how to acquire the data properly and then they have to learn how to calibrate it put it all through all their programs and then you know come up with their conclusions and do all these things so it can be quite daunting origin is going to make learning how to do research so much easier because you can take the whole telescope setup out of the equation it will set up itself and then you're just more worried about the data collection and processing so I think origin will greatly enhance University photometry projects you know variable Stars uh looking at asteroid rotation periods that sort of thing uh so when I was in graduate school I studied asteroid rotation periods with differential photometry and I think origin would be awesome for this for two reasons again number one it's simple and easy to set up but number two it would be quite easy to collaborate with others and that's really key in Asteroid rotation period research because I can observe an asteroid and get one data point you know every few minutes or so but if I have multiple observers you know seven or eight observers all looking at the same same asteroid Gathering that same data when we combine all of our data our error bars get shorter and our conclusions become much stronger so I can publish an asteroid rotation period with much higher confidence with you know the work of eight or nine collaborators than I could by myself so if a bunch of universities are are buying Origins you could have like this awesome collaborative Network for real life research on variable stars or or asteroids or whatever so I think the opportunity for research with the origin is going to be pretty cool and this is another reason why I think it's so important that the files are downloadable with a flash drive because you can stick your flash drive in there get the files and you're ready to you know start processing for your for your research data so overall just to summarize here I think the origin is going to be awesome for your traditional astronomy Market visual observers or astrophotographers I think it's going to be great EAA it's going to be even bigger star parties are going to rock with the celest on origin and people are going to get so excited about it especially when multiple people can see what's going on and Liv stacking it's just going to be great for EA especially and then for University Research whether you're doing asteroid studies or variable star studies or even looking at exoplanets I think it's going to be cool to get more people into research because it's going to be less daunting more inclusive if you will so I think the origin has a lot of potential it's going to be really cool and I think it's a really bold entry by Celestron the rasis 6 is no joke is a serious telescope and that is going to be a huge addition I think to the smart telescope Market to have this big step up above a lot of what the other smart telescopes will do so overall I love the origin I think it's a pretty darn cool idea I'm excited to see where it goes and what people do with it so please leave a comment below what are your thoughts on Origin are you going to buy one have you pre-ordered one um and uh yeah excited to see what you have to to say and and see what people do with it so anyway hope you have a great day thanks so much for watching and clear skies

Channel: AstroBlender

Views: 19,467

Keywords: Celestron, Origin, Celestron Origin, Smart Telescope, Astrophotography, EAA, Astronomy, Astronomy Outreach, Photometry, Asteroids, Exoplanets, Variable Stars, RASA, RASA 6, RASA 8, RASA 11, RASA 14

Id: KdRL0YTHEO0

Length: 12min 5sec (725 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 16 2024