Vixen Polarie Star Tracker

Product Information

The first thing I noticed when I opened the box was how much heavier the Polarie was than I anticipated. Not that it’s heavy, but it sure is heftier and more solid than I expected. This is a serious piece of equipment. These devices are commonly used with a DSLR camera and lens, or even a small astronomical telescope. Recent models now include dedicated smartphone apps to manage your imaging session, and even point to deep-sky objects in the night sky. Duration of Operation: About 2 hours at 68 Deg temperature and a 4.4 lb loading with use of alkaline batteries In illumination mode, the built-in latitude scale glows red and the rotary switch glows either red for northern hemisphere or green for southern hemisphere. For alignment in the dark, there is a mode that simply illuminates the latitude dial. This helps when aligning, especially if you’re on a photographic field where torches are banned.

Set up using your smartphone as the Polarie produces its own WiFi signal. So you can control the mount from your smartphone using a free app. This is not only comfortable, but also enables hands-free operation. The camera mount is attached to the Polarie U by two thumbscrews so this can be fully detached (a carry-over feature from Vixen’s previous model), which allows the ball head and camera to be attached easily. The whole point of the Polarie is to counteract the apparent motion of the stars. To do this, the Polarie rotates around an axis pointing at the South Celestial Pole (SCP). A small latitude scale, graduated from 0° to 70°, is built into the left side of the Polarie. It can be illuminated in red using the rotating switch. Although the scale is rather coarse (the graduations are in 5° increments) it is more than adequate for preparing for polar alignment through the sight hole or polarscope. PolarscopeFor a little more than the price of the Vixen Polarie, you could get the Star Adventurer Pro, which includes: Which one should you invest your hard-earned money in for astrophotography? That will depend on the type of user experience you are looking for, and my goal for this article is to highlight the key differences in the user experience for each mount. The Polarie U is a camera mount with which your camera can follow the rotation of the night sky. This makes it possible to take astronomical images with longer exposure times using your camera and a camera lens: wonderfully sharp images of stars, nebulae and the Milky Way! R.A. Slow Motion Control: Wheel and worm gears full circle micro movement; 58.4mm in diameter, 144-tooth, made of aluminum alloy With a little patience and a fine polar alignment, I was able to generate the image shown in Figure 4. For this image, I used the T2i with a 135-mm lens. This time I took 15 exposures of 2 minutes each. The exposure length was limited by my sky conditions, not the ability of the Polarie. I also oriented the camera vertically to provide a different composition from that of the the wide-field view shown in Figure 1.

The maximum loading weight will be increased to 6.5kg/14 lbs (approx. 2.5kg/5.5 lbs at 10cm from the center of rotation) if a POLARIE Multi Founded in 1949, Vixen Co. Ltd has been Japan’s leading manufacturer of Astronomical Telescopes, Mounts and Accessories for over 60 years. Responsible for the introduction of the popular GO-TO Controller and ‘world standard’ Dovetail Mounting System, the company has been instrumental in shaping the market in which it has operated both under its own name and as an OEM supplier to some of the world’s big astronomical equipment brands. The Polarie has a wide range of accessories, from the compass to mount on the hot-shoe for daytime polar alignment to the Counterweight Upgrade Kit, which includes: At the first 10 min, it was ok, but after the batteries chilled down it was simply not enough to power it properly. It becomes so useful because long exposures of two minutes or more are necessary to capture enough light, color, and detail to properly reveal the Milky Way, as well as faint celestial sights such as star fields, galaxies, nebulae, and even gas clouds.

Power Source: 4 pieces of AA batteries: Alkaline batteries, Ni-MH rechargeable or Ni-Cd rechargeable; USB Type-C external power supply batteries are available also. It's been a year, and I still continue to be impressed by the Polarie. I find that because of its simplicity I manage to make more opportunities to image than I did before with my larger setups. Sometimes simple is best. Here's some of my results, you be the judge. Furthermore, when used for time-lapse photography, the POLARIE U can hold the loading capacity as heavy as 10 kg/22 lbs at the maximum (about

The POLARIE U expands a wonderful world of star-scape photography and the pleasure of photography can be experienced by everyone. e power switch, the icons on the mode display start blinking one after another toward the direction of the rotation which corresponds to the slid of the powA silhouetted landscape on earth is photographed together with the starry sky. The beauty of a landscape and the starry sky can be shown together on one photo. POLARIE U opens up a wonderful foreign world of star-scape photography and makes this possible for both beginners and advanced photographers. Conventional telescopic astrophotography photographs a relatively narrow area of the sky. Star-scape photography mainly uses a wide-angle lens and takes impressive photos in which stars, and other celestial targets such as the majestic Milky Way and landscapes are combined. The possibilities of the compositions are endless and a completely new kind of landscape photography opens up. Compared to the classic Polarie, the Polarie U is considerably lighter with a higher load capacity. The distance between the two bearings which support the rotating shafts amounts to around four times that of its predecessor. This leads to increased load capacity despite the 20% reduction in weight. The maximum load capacity is 2.5kg for wide field astrophotography. With the optional mounting accessories consisting of prism rails and counterweights, the load capacity can be increased to 6.5kg.

The standout feature on the Polarie U is the ability to connect your camera directly to it and then control the entire setup from the Polarie U app. Switching down to a 50mm lens, we found that 60-second exposure shots gave pinpoint stars, but 120-second exposures were beyond our reach.

At the time I had no idea the Polarie even existed. I knew of the Astrotrac and the Losmandy Starlapse, both of which seemed to mostly fit the bill on paper. I took advantage of my time in Cali and drove up to Woodland Hills since they had both systems on display in the show room. I had seen results on CN from Astrotrac users, but knew of no one using the Starlapse. of maximum payload is enough for shooting with a small DSLR or Mirrorless cameras fitted with a wide-angle or medium telephoto lens. A miniature switch hidden behind the battery box cover is used to select hemisphere drive direction. As an accessory, Vixen (and other third parties) sell a polar scope with a reticule. This reticule is a screen you can look through that shows where the alignment stars should be. You install the scope through the centre of the Polarie, then peer though it to align on Sigma Octantis. In the best conditions, this is a very accurate way of aligning the Polarie. The problem is that finding Sigma Octantis in a polar scope is famously difficult. It’s even harder in a light polluted area. The built-in rechargeable battery has a decent runtime (though you can also run it off a portable battery) and we enjoyed uninterrupted imaging. Results are very impressive, with good results of a selection of stars and galaxies, and the operation of the setup isn't too noisy.