Over a Year with the Dwarf3 Smart Telescope

It’s been over a year since I acquired a Dwarf3 smart scope, so wanted to check in and talk about my experience. I have my own observatory with a full astrophotography setup but wanted something portable which was easy to set up and run for excursions and travel. I had played around with a Dwarf 2 belonging to someone I met at a star party, and decided to go ahead with the Dwarf3. It’s been a great experience so far.

Almost immediately, I was able to collect very nice images from my property here in the central Texas area. The interface has been easy to use and is updated fairly regularly with new functionality to expand the scope’s capabilities. Really liking the dual scope design, which allows for widefield and tele astro and regular photography. The recent star trails addition was a good call by the folks at Dwarflab which provides very nice results. Really, you can set it up and capture great astro images in no time.

The M8 Lagoon Nebula

As an aviation buff, the tracking feature has been fun to mess around with. I’ve tracked and acquired video and stills of aircraft flying up to 40,000’, and have also had it capturing some action at a nearby glider field.

Portability is great! I took it with me on two trips to Australia last year and was able to capture southern hemisphere objects very easily. No fancy setup process, just turn it on, use the Atlas to find object and shoot away. Literally a portable observatory.

The Eta Carinae Nebula, shot from Australia.

I recently acquired another two Dwarf3s and will be using them to teach astrophotography in my area. I taught astronomy for a little while at a nearby observatory and used the Dwarf there to give visitors a “camera view” of the objects they were observing visually through our main telescope. It always impressed folks!

Anyway, a great system that continues to evolve. Highly recommend it if you’re looking to get into astrophotography without great expense.