Admit it, we’ve all dreamed of exploring what’s out there in the cosmos at some point. Shoutout to those who wrote down “become an astronaut” as their ambition on school yearbooks: Your astro-fantasies are now possible. And get this: No spaceships required.
If you love outer space and photography, there’s a device that can turn your smartphone into a camera-telescope hybrid. It’s called Vespera, designed by Vaonis, a company creating portable astronomical exploration stations.
It’s a smaller version of Stellina, the earlier smart space station model Vaonis had created and designed to capture powerful images. Vespera meanwhile was designed to make astronomy more accessible “for sky lovers looking for simplicity and unforgettable experiences to share,” reads the description on its website.
On its own, Vespera is about 40 cm tall and 20 cm wide, and weighs about five kilograms. It uses apochromatic lens, a type of lens designed to correct refracted images, focus colors on the same plane, and provide the sharpest image possible. Those lenses are more common in telescopes and microscopes than in photography, though some cameras’ zoom capabilities do have the apochromatic design.
It connects to your smartphone and uses GPS to show you all the objects you can observe. Depending on your location, the accompanying mobile app will recommend a list of objects you can select from. Vespera will point toward it and show it on your phone screen, allowing you to explore and even capture it for documentation or share it on social media.
You can pre-order Vespera for $1,499 (about P72,000) with expected distribution by spring 2022, or around March to June next year. For the full list of specs and details, you can also check out its website. Here are some of the images captured using Vespera.
The Dumbbell Nebula
The moon
Andromeda
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Photos from Vaonis