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ZWO Sestar 50 vs DWARF II
ZWO and their Australian resellers (eg, Testar, Bintel) have announced local availability of their integrated scope, EAF, GOTO mount, all in a neat box, from about August.
The scope is a 50mm aperture f/5, claimed to be an apo triplet. Not sure how you fit all that with an ASI462 colour camera behind it in such a small box without folding the optical path, or at such a small price point (USD399).
ZWO's website says that it can be used by day or night, and that it will feature live stacking, ie, software field de-rotation of the images taken from an Alt.-az. mount, but there's no demonstration video of the phone app which controls everything. How will exposure and gain be set? Will time-lapse recording of stacked images be possible?
How user-friendly will the interface be? How complete the documentation? (Pages are missing in my ASIair pdf documentation.)
The blurbs claim that filters can be used, but it's not clear how, nor the size. Might these be restricted to ZWO filters?
Three image formats, but not RAW.
The price point and the features scream that ZWO is competing head-on with the newly-available DWARF II. Should make for some interesting side-by-side comparisons in the astro magazines!
There are discussions on Cloudy Nights already.
Jim Irish, SE Queensland
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