This $479 Smart Telescope Lets Anyone Shoot Beautiful Astro Photos

Jul 18, 2024

Jeremy Gray

Two people are sitting on a grassy cliff at night, lit by the glow of a flashlight or a small lantern. They are looking at a device on the ground and smiling, with a calm ocean and starry sky in the background. They are both dressed warmly, suggesting a cool evening.

“Smart telescopes” are all the rage, thanks to the ease with which novice stargazers can use them to capture beautiful photos of the cosmos. However, they’re often expensive. That’s where Dwarflab’s Dwarf 3 Smart Telescope comes in, priced at under $500.

The Dwarf 3 Smart Telescope is billed as “the world’s most portable and all-round smart telescope” by its creator, and it promises that with its fast and easy set-up, users can begin taking photos in “just minutes.”

The small, lightweight telescope weighs just 1.3 kilograms (2.86 pounds) and can easily fit in a small bag. Its base has a tripod thread, allowing it to be quickly set up in the field.

A person wearing a dark green jacket holds a compact, silver device with one hand and a black case with the other hand, standing outdoors near a grassy area, with blurred natural surroundings in the background.

A compact video camera with a green glowing ring on its front sits on a small tripod, positioned on a concrete surface overlooking a blurred, cityscape at dusk. The distant city lights are softly illuminated against the twilight sky.

A camera mounted on a tripod is set up outdoors during twilight, with an out-of-focus person in the background. The camera lens is illuminated with a green ring, and the sky above is filled with faint stars.

The telescope works alongside a new Dwarflab app, which lets users capture photos in a single tap — no fussing with exposure settings, calibration, or focus. However, for advanced users, the app also offers precise manual adjustments to dial in the desired look. The app includes a library of cosmic objects, including celestial bodies like the Moon or planets, specific stars, and nebulas, which the smart telescope can track in the sky over a more extended exposure period (up to a minute), allowing for sharp, detailed photos with relatively low noise.

A smartphone screen displaying a stargazing app. The app shows a star-filled night sky with labeled celestial objects, including Sirius, Canopus, and Achernar. Icons for app navigation and settings are visible at the bottom, and the time 11:22 is displayed.

AI-powered post-processing, like that seen on some competing smart telescopes, is also involved in helping improve image quality even further. But there is some nice camera tech at the heart of the $499 Dwarf 3 Smart Telescope. The device uses Sony Starvis 2 image sensors (IMX678), Type 1/1.8 8.3-megapixel sensors built explicitly for low-light, high-sensitivity shooting applications. Specifically, they are made with security applications in mind, but the pivot to a smart telescope makes quite a bit of sense.

Two people stand in a grassy field at twilight, with a tripod-mounted camera or projector with a green light in front of them. The background shows trees and a darkening sky with a few stars visible.

Two people are looking at a detailed photograph of the moon on a smartphone screen in an outdoor setting near the water. A telescope is mounted on a tripod in the background, capturing the moon's image.

A stunning view of the Milky Way galaxy stretching across the night sky. The image captures the densely packed stars and cosmic dust, creating a beautiful and intricate pattern of light and dark areas in the vast expanse of space.

A vibrant image of the Orion Nebula, showcasing a dense region of colorful gas and dust with prominent pink and red hues at its core, surrounded by bright stars scattered across a dark, starry background.

There’s not just one camera on the Dwarf 3, though — there are two. There’s a wide-angle camera and a telephoto camera. Considering crop factors, the lenses are equivalent to 45mm and 737mm, respectively. The cameras also include built-in filters for astrophotography, including a visual infrared filter for daytime photography, an astro filter that extends the infrared range (430 to 690 nanometers), and a dual-band filter that targets explicitly OIII (500.7nm), Hβ(486nm), and Hα (656.3nm) wavelengths, which reduce the impact of light pollution on night sky photos and helps ensure clearer emission nebula images.

Dwarf 3 captures JPG, PNG, FITS, and TIFF files. FITS images are specifically for astrophotography applications, and are the files that professionals use as part of Hubble and James Webb Space Telescope programs.

The Dwarf 3 Smart Telescope is slated to begin shipping in September and is available to preorder now for $479.

Image credits: Dwarflab