Vixen Optics 35505 Polarie Star Tracker

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Price: $389.59    

Product Feature

• Use Polarie with Your Digital Camera
• No Astronomy experience necessary
• Take Star Scape images at night
• Lightweight and compact

Product Description

This compact mount platform allows you to capture night scapes and star images with ease. Set up is simple. The Polarie attaches to a standard camera tripod and can accept any digital camera weighing up to 3.5lbs. Using the included compass on the Polarie, orient the mount to face north. The Polarie features a North Star alignment window that you point at Polaris. The Polarie can also use a polar scope for alignment. Once set, the Polarie tracks with the motion of the stars to eliminate "star trailing" on your images resulting in sharp images of the Universe. The Polarie uses very accurate stepping motors and operates on 2 "AA" batteries. Polarie is designed to not only be functional, but also to be compact and attractive. The Polarie has a smooth, good looking design. The unit has no visible screws and although, not waterproof, it is designed to function in most weather conditions.

Vixen Optics 35505 Polarie Star Tracker Review

I've always looked at magazine photos of nebulae, galaxies, etc., and always thought that realm of photography was off limits except for people with a lot of money and a lot of technical knowledge about astronomy. Every time I looked online to research equatorial mounts and all the other gadgets to take good stills of outer space, I would end up intimidated both by the price and the complicated looking setups. Then I found the Vixen Polarie.
Simplicity and quality were what I was looking for all along, and it finally seemed as though Vixen had nailed it. I ordered it, (actually I hinted to my wife emphatically that I wanted it for my birthday - she's quite wonderful) and when I opened the package, I could immediately tell it was a quality product. It feels heavy in your hands, as the case is all metal, aside from the battery cover, which is plastic. The camera mount is machined aluminum with a very nice spring loaded camera ballhead mount. (More on that later) There is a mini USB port at the bottom of the battery cover for powering through your laptop as an option instead of using 2 - AA batteries. The dial for the different modes on the top feels very solid and has satisfying clicks between modes. The compass, which is screwed directly into the opposite side from the camera head mount also seems like a quality instrument. But could it really allow me to take good photos of deep-space objects?
First off, the Polarie is advertised as a wide-field mount, which to me, sounds at first like it isn't accurate enough to take good photos of individual globular clusters and planetary nebulae. Plus the fact that it's advertised as having a payload of only 4.4 lbs renders it unable to manage most long lenses along with a good slr and a ballhead. My 5D Mk II and 300mm f/4L IS weighs in at 4.8lbs without the ballhead. But, of course, that was the very first setup I tried a few nights later, and I was not disappointed.
Setup is very easy, but you will need a good quality tripod along with 2 ball heads. One to mount the Polarie, and one to mount your camera to the Polarie. Ah, yes. The Polarie incorporates a 1/4"-20 mount for your camera ballhead. So you will need to get a 1/4"-20 to 3/8" adapter plate. Manfrotto makes one for around ten bucks. Anyway, back to setup. First, find Polaris and point the Polarie in its general direction. There is a small sight glass in the upper right hand corner that you aim through, and I found that if you look at Polaris and move your head behind the sight glass without taking your focus from the star made it fairly easy to line it up in the center of the glass. Then lock down that ballhead, and install your camera complete with ballhead onto the other side of the Polarie, turn the dial on top to the picture of the star, and you are now ready to go! Now to find something photo-worthy in the night sky!
I guess I should point out that I have a fairly decent knowledge of camera equipment, but a miniscule knowledge of where to find astronomical features to photograph. If you are like me, then I highly recommend the book Nightwatch by Terence Dickinson. The first object I pointed at was M51 - the Whirlpool Galaxy, right near the end of the Big Dipper. It can't be seen with the naked eye, but Nightwatch pointed me in the general direction. After a 30 second exposure, there it was near the middle of the viewfinder. Amazing! I was seeing a galaxy 35 million light years away on my first try! I did try some longer exposures with the 300mm, but I was getting some star trails after about 45 seconds. For more accurate aligning, I am purchasing the polar scope, and I will update this review after giving it a try. I will also post a photo of the Whirlpool Galaxy and an edited version as well, so you can know what to expect from a 300mm lens.
The Polarie also allows you to take wide field land/star scapes, and I have seen neat time lapse movies made with the Polarie by stringing together numerous shots over the course of the night. Of course, there is imaging software and quite a few other things involved in taking good astrophotos, which I will not go into here. All information and software is available on the internet free of charge, and the Polarie allows you to utilize a lot of it. I am definitely looking forward to many nights out under the stars with my Polarie!

UPDATE 7/1/2012:

After purchasing the polar scope, I can definitely say that it provides a huge step in alignment accuracy. The scope is very easy to use, and takes only a couple minutes to set up. The only problem is, the directions from the Vixen website and the Polarie manual are a little difficult to understand, but after an initial struggle, it was a breeze. Now, I can get 3-4 minute exposures with 480mm equivalent focal length. I have left a photo of the Lagoon Nebula to show how much even a rookie like me can improve after some practice.

WARNING:

I had a difficult time moving the time zone meridian declination hash mark on the scope to the proper position, and there is, included in the packaging, a tiny allen wrench that is screaming, "Use me!". So I figured that loosening the small ring with the hash mark and moving that would allow me to position it precisely. Wrong. The only thing the allen key is used for is calibrating the scope, which is set at the factory. So why they included it without any calibration procedures is beyond me, but they did. So whatever you do, don't use it. I had a very hard time finding out how to re-calibrate mine accurately. I first tried to find how online, which was difficult, so I called Vixen's customer service line, and he was helpful. If you do need to calibrate it, leave a comment and I will respond with easy instructions.

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