Celestron First Scope Upgrade Project

Celestron First Scope
Upgrade Project

* 4mm eyepiece
* 10mm eyepiece
* 23mm eyepiece
* Finderscope
* Astro Cam

Upgrades
All lightweight components are the key to upgrading. The Celestron FirstScope has a fixed OTA with no provisions for adjusting balance. Therefore, any accessories added will need to be very light weight.

Discard Plastic Lens Eyepieces
The tiny 3" Celestron FirstScope needs an immediate upgrade out of the box. First, throw away those nasty plastic lens eyepieces. They only help to degrade the image. Ours melted on a hot summer day! (see FirstScope review)
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-firstscope-my-review.html

New Eyepieces

Upgrade with almost weightless Svbony aspheric eyepieces in the 4mm, 10mm and 23mm focal lengths. These are excellent performers with a wide 62 degree field of view and comfortable exit pupils for easy visuals and eyepiece projection for astro imaging.
You also want these low profile eyepieces so their tube structures do not dip down into the telescope and obstruct the mirror. (see measurements photo) The eyepieces are less than an ounce or less than two ounces depending on their focal length (see chart), fitting our nearly weightless requirement to keep the telescope well balanced. The 23mm is about $11, the 10mm is $12.20 and the 4mm is $12.60. When other eyepieces have astronomical costs, these fit the FirstScope budget!

One thing we like about these EPs is they let through a lot of light with their ultra wide diameter lenses. The simplistic optical arrangement is a spectacular performer and matches the FirstScope's short focal length (about 12-inches at F4). The coated optics reduces reflections. The reflections we had came from the multiple complex lenses in the Apple iPhone cameras.

Finderscope
Next, the telescope needs a finderscope but again, one that's nearly weightless. I managed to find an original OEM replacement at 5x by 24mm diameter, to the one in the upgrade kit originally offered by Celestron. This plastic finderscope comes from China, same as the telescope, weighs only 1.8 ounces and costs less than $5! It fits the minuscule little telescope perfectly. If you buy it in the Celestron package it will cost almost $30. The mounting bolts are already on the OTA and the finderscope attaches instantly. It's a piece of cake.

Astro Cam!
Last but not least is the addition of a slick astro cam. This one is ultralight and is like the eyepiece, weighing less than 2 ounces. It runs on an older Mac laptop. The advantage of using a cam over the iPhone is the light weight and the image is large when spread out across a computer screen. This helps focus, centering, etc. The cost is extremely low as this was a USB cam purchased a number of years ago. As used computer equipment, it produces outstanding electronic images, has an automatic exposure and gain circuit, has software with controls, and the front lens is fully adjustable that can be set to infinity. Logitech and third parties may no longer offer free drivers for new PC and Mac computers with new OS (for old cams). These OS get updates every 2 or 3 months these days! However, an old Mac laptop will do the trick.

Suggestions
Another alternative is to buy new on budget - for $33 a USB 2.0 Wansview webcam is available at 1080p, 30 fps, and 90 deg. fov. It has audio for recording details about the exposures. Another is the Hrayzan for $49 - it has an extra wide fov. Note the camera mount made from a few rubber bands, again weighing next to nothing.

Electronic Eyepiece
Now that technology is changing at the drop of a hat, with costs that have little regard to those on a budget, let's take a trip into the lesser tech world for some things that fit perfect on our budget telescopes. If a new cam is too much for the budget, a more cost effective approach is to try out a CMOS electronic eyepiece for a PC laptop. Costs go down to about $5.65 for a Windows OS unit. These are sold unvetted from China by many trade names.

The cost is down also because these sensors are small (4.86mm x 3.64mm) and do 640x480 at 15 fps and 320x240 at 30 fps, yet operate at 24 bit RGB. Sample images supplied by the seller at left with a 3-inch telescope and the electronic eyepiece show lunar and planetary color.

The Moon image has some image processing to remove spots, increase contrast, crop, sharpen, and flip the image to the correct orientation. Saturn is a raw image. Both are in full 24-bit RGB color. The photos were taken without any calibration frames, i.e. dark, bias, flat, etc.

Celestron FirstScope - Index
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-firstscope-index.html

Evscope Card Waiting

The new telescope is dead and not working. The card with
software is bonkers and needs internal replacement.
This little micro sd card with "oops" software has posed
challenges for purchasers of new eVscopes from
Unistellar. Right out of the box, this smart telescope is not
smart and needs brain surgery to rectify its comatose
mental condition. Unistellar won't specify the number of
affected telescopes but it could be in the thousands.

Evscope Card Waiting

and

Arrival
This is a record log of waiting time to receive the eVscope micro sd card with the correct software from Unistellar company, to be installed inside the defective new smart telescope to replace the card with the defective software. 

Currently the telescope does not work and the LED is stuck on the steady purple light indicating the scope will not boot or function properly. 

Unistellar eVscope founders: left to right, From right to left: Antonin Borot, Arnaud Malvache, Laurent Marfisi, Franck Marchis. November 2017 in Aix-en-Provences.

Photo Unistellar

The card will be shipped from San Francisco according to Trevor, stating his associate was informed to ship the card on Aug. 28, 2020. I requested expedited air service which did not happen. As of this writing, there is no contact with the shipper, and no shipping or tracking number, and I was not initially provided the name of the shipping company. As you can see below, Unistellar waited another 5 days before saying they just shipped the card (United States Postal Service USPS). 

Update: the card arrived on Tuesday afternoon, September 15th, 2020, postmarked San Francisco California on August 31st. The envelope had a crossed-out return address from the SETI Institute, at 189 Bernardo Avenue, Suite 200, Mountain View CA 94043, and Franck Marchis name handwritten over it. The Sandisk Class 10 Ultra Micro SD HC I 16 GB card was taped to the SETI Institute calling card of Dr. Franck Marchis, Ph.D., one of the four original founders of Unistellar and the eVscope (see photo above). A personal note was also included! It was a surprise and a great honor to hear from the original founder of Unistellar and maker of the eVscope! I'm totally blown away by this great personal touch.

The SD card was shipped USPS from San Francisco by Dr. Franck Marchis, an original founder of Unistellar and the eVscope, along with a personal note handwritten on an index card.

Checkmark indicates waiting for the card

✔︎ Thursday Aug. 28  NO CARD Trevor: card ship now

  arrive 1-2 weeks

✔︎ Friday Aug. 29    NO CARD
✔︎ Saturday Aug. 30  NO CARD
✔︎ Sunday Aug. 31    NO CARD Card actually shipped
✔︎ Monday Sept. 01   NO CARD Trevor: Shipped today

  arrive in 1 week

✔︎ Tuesday Sept. 2   NO CARD
✔︎ Wednesday Sept. 3 NO CARD
✔︎ Thursday Sept. 4  NO CARD
✔︎ Friday Sept. 5    NO CARD
✔︎ Saturday Sept. 6  NO CARD
✔︎ Sunday Sept. 7    NO CARD
✔︎ Monday Sept. 8    NO CARD

✔︎ Tuesday Sept. 9   NO CARD

✔︎ Wednesday Sep. 10 NO CARD

✔︎ Thursday Sept. 11 NO CARD

✔︎ Friday Sept. 12   NO CARD

✔︎ Saturday Sept. 13 NO CARD

✔︎ Sunday Sept. 14   NO CARD

✔︎ Monday Sept. 15   NO CARD

✔︎ Tuesday Sept. 16  CARD ARRIVED!!!

Evscope Smart Telescope Analysis

eVscope Telescope Innards

Hardware
The eVscope is powered by a Raspberry Pi board with the LINUX operating system and that means one thing - filesystem on an SD card.  The smart telescope has these two electronic cards. At the right is a telescope controller board by Unistellar and at left is the stock Raspberry Pi 3 computer.  When we disconnect Unishield from the Raspi, we can see the bottom side of the PCB with a dsPIC33E microchip responsible for control of the motors. The Unishield also contains a LSM6DSM gyroscope/accelerometer module. Image found on internet at a reverse engineering site.

Computer and Interface
The Raspberry Pi does not use its DSI display interface, audio jack, or any of the USB ports. It gets power via GPIO pins from the Unishield, which is then directly soldered to a battery. The GPIO is also used for communication with the Unishield, e.g. to control the azimuth/altitude motors. The camera stream goes from the IMX224 sensor's board to the Unishield via an HDMI cable, and the data is then forwarded to the Raspberry Pi through the CSI camera interface. This is the same ribbon cable connector used by the official Raspberry Pi camera module (which uses IMX219, a different Sony sensor). Raspberry Pi then uses its own HDMI-out to display the starfield in the eye-piece, which is powered by an OLED display.

Software
We see 4 partitions. Partition 1 and 2 are identical, and one of them likely acts as a fallback in case of a failed firmware update. Partition 3 contains a fairly large (3.4GB) SQLite database called afdstarmap.db, which holds information about objects in the sky. This database is used by the telescope to figure out where it should point itself. The 4th and largest partition is also the only one that is used for storing user data, e.g. observations that can be later uploaded to Unistellar for research purposes.

Partitions
Partitions 1 & 2 are the ones we'll focus on first. We see a fairly standard setup for a Raspberry-based device. cmdline.txt and config.txt are used for interfacing with the firmware and it's where you set low level hardware preferences for different system buses and/or features of the SoC. evscope.dtb contains a device tree, describing all the different hardware features of the board(s). I've linked to the decompiled device tree in the hardware section. Then we have evscope.fw, which is the most important file of all - it contains the whole Linux system that powers the machine. Because the system is booted from a firmware file rather than a regular filesystem, runtime changes are not written back and the system is restored to its previous configuration on every reboot.

Boot
Upon boot, Partition 3 gets mounted as /media/ro, while the user-data Partition 4 gets mounted as /media/rw.

Hardware
System platform: Raspberry Pi 3 A+
Custom board: Unistellar Unishield (Rev P)
Camera sensor: Sony IMX224
Storage: 16GB SanDisk micro SD card
Raspberry Pi Computer
https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-a-plus/
Sony IMX224
https://www.sony-semicon.co.jp/products/common/pdf/IMX224.pdf

Celestron Firstscope Image Through Glass

Celestron Firstscope
Image Through Window Glass Project

NEW! This is the next ultra radical project accomplished with the little telescope that could - the mighty Celestron FirstScope.

Iphone 6 Plus at 1X is a bit overexposed and
unable to fully compensate the exposure. In
this image, the ocular's circular FOV is
apparent.

The night of Sunday August 30th 2020 - A session with the Gibbous Moon and the Celestron FirstScope while staying indoors in comfort!

Introduction
Imaging through window glass is one of the biggest NO-NOs known to astronomers,  both amateur and professional. The glass from a window seriously distorts the image from the telescope and both eyes and camera simply won't see the best image. But hey, what if your telescope is already small and minuscule (2.99" diameter) and optically compromised according to some people? SCT's look through a window of corrected glass all the time. However, house windows are endowed with seriously optically flawed panes of glass. The problem is the glass is not flat and can cause distortions. But what if our telescope s very small and we look through a very small planar section of window glass?

The Proposal
What can we actually expect by using it to image through a glass window indoors? And let's suppose the temperature is cool indoors from air conditioning and the outside is very hot and humid. Incidentally, there is no thermal equilibrium between the telescope and the outdoors or the window glass, there is no telescope drive, the diagonal is compromised in size, and the camera is handheld with no mount. What could go wrong? What could we possibly expect?

Results
Actually, the results are not bad, rather good one might say! Surprise! The best images were taken with the 10mm 62 degree aspheric eyepiece around 20x and a CPL polarizing filter, both from Svbony. A Moon filter did not noticeably change the image and results remained on the overexposed side. The Celestron 6mm orthoscopic eyepiece had a too small exit pupil to be of any real use. The 23mm EP showed a small bright moon with various camera reflections occurring. That image scale was too small and bright in the 12-inch EFL scope, which gives about 12 power. Once again, we have proven aspheric lenses perform superior with this scope. General image processing was applied with Apple Photos on a Mac.

Tips
The trick here was to use two iPhone cameras, one is a 6 Plus with OS 12.4.6 for experimentation and the other is the mighty Xs Max running OS 13.6 with the same 10mm EP and filter but in 2x mode boosting the image to around 40x, just fitting in the FOV to get the best results.

Conclusion
Celestron FirstScope, you have shown the impossible is possible, and in spite of all your deficiencies, we love you!

Celestron FirstScope - Index
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-firstscope-index.html

Nightcap Experiment

NightCap Moon & Jupiter
Experimenting with Nightcap - the gibbous Moon and Jupiter on the night of Saturday, August 29, 2020 shot with a handheld Apple iPhone and the app NightCap. Some additional process was applied with free PhotoScape X including luminance and color noise reduction and the film effect plus merging with Apple Paintbrush.

At left, a screenshot of NightCap, showing these settings on the iPhone. Note, NightCap has additional settings. For the Moon and Jupiter, the ISO was boosted high, JPG was high quality, noise was reduced, and the exposure was cut to one second.

Celestron FirstScope Jupiter at 80,000 Power

Celestron FirstScope - Image Scale Project Jupiter at 80,000 Power
What is the largest image scale that a tiny telescope can achieve on a massive planet like Jupiter? Let's experiment and find out.

For this special project, the iPhone astro app NightCap was used to acquire the image of Jupiter and enlarge it with maximum zoom. Such massive image scale is often called "empty magnification" because it exceeds the power limitations of the aperture and likely is without fine detail. Nevertheless, the FirstScope has achieved a truly massive image scale showing the planet jupiter on the night of Saturday, August 29, 2020. At left is a photo of the FirstScope taken in total darkness using NightCap. The telescope uses an arsenal of almost weightless aspheric lens eyepieces and eyepiece projection by holding the phone above the ocular, therefore there is no weight imbalance and no counterweights are needed. This experiment also used a 6mm Celestron orthoscopic eyepiece (heavier but not too heavy) for a much higher EFL. The final image was image processed, enlarged, rotated, scaled, reduced in noise, and adjusted. A grid scale was added to determine the overall image magnification of 400mm * 100x * 2mm = 80,000 power. This is truly a remarkable feat of Jupiter image scale and color for such a small and meager telescope.

Celestron FirstScope - Index
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-firstscope-index.html

Celestron FirstScope Index

Celestron FirstScope Index

Celestron FirstScope - Index
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-firstscope-index.html

Celestron FirstScope Eyepiece Tip

https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/09/celestron-firstscope-eyepiece-tip.html

Celestron FirstScope Accessories Test Project

https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/09/celestron-firstscope-test-accessories.html

Celestron FirstScope Upgrade Project

https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-first-scope-upgrade-project.html

Celestron FirstScope Image through Glass Project
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-firstscope-image-through-glass.html

Celestron FirstScope Image Scale Project
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-firstscope-image-scale-project.html

Celestron First Scope - Simulation Image Intensifier Project
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-first-scope-simulation.html

Celestron FirstScope - Full Moon Project
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-firstscope-full-moon.html

Celestron FirstScope - My Review
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-firstscope-my-review.html

Celestron FirstScope - Introduction
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-firstscope.html

Celestron Firstscope - Play
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-full-moon-imaged-through-my.html

Orion Starblast

4.5" StarBlast telescope Mosaic by DaemonGPF

The Next Telescope
Orion StarBlast

I've become quite enamored with tabletop telescopes. Plus, it's astro on the cheap without computers, electronics and high tech gear that can fail.

They are lightweight, low cost, easily carried, and setup in seconds. They are self auto balancing and grab and go stature. The newer ones now have higher quality optics and they're ideal for many astronomical projects. No fussing with a computer or overly complicated electronics and star calibrations. After the recent runin of problems with computerized telescopes, my aperture fever has taken a sharp turn towards the small and uncomplicated. In upgrading from the Celestron FirstScope, the Orion StarBlast is a likely candidate. It supersizes the minuscule 3-inch mirror to one that just exceeds 4.5-inches or up to 6-inches. The biggest problem with these telescopes, they are all sold out and unavailable at this time. Here's a rundown of total telescope weight for tabletop small telescopes.

  

$54.95    Celestron FirstScope 3" Dob    - 4.3 lbs
$199.99   Orion Starblast      4.5" Dob  - 13 lbs
$349.99   Orion Starblast      6" Dob    - 25 lbs

Photo
The Ring Nebula M57 imaged through the Orion StarBlast 4.5" F4 telescope with tracking. Source CC by 2.0. The next image of Orion is with the StarBlast 4.5" and the NightCap app on a smartphone. Starblast photo by Mike Otis.

Nightcap
Many people are using the NightCap camera app. For $3 you can have a complete astro camera on your smartphone, capable of taking time exposures, video in low light, and capturing deep sky objects on a shoestring budget - matching low cost small tabletop telescopes.

https://nightcapcamera.com/

Review
https://allthestuff.com/orion-starblast/

https://astronomy.com/-/media/import/files/pdf/9/d/d/0104_orion_starblast.pdf

Image Gallery
http://tidalsoundings.blogspot.com/2016/04/adventure-in-astrophotography-begins.html

Evscope Update

The latest update regarding the failed eVscope

Friday August 28 2020
I think it's good news. I just need to have super patience and bide my time for a half month.

Today, Unistellar claims to have contacted a colleague in San Francisco to ship a card with the correct software to my address in Taiwan. Yesterday, they didn't know if they would ship the card to Taiwan for some unknown reason. As explained today, shipping will take up to 2 weeks, contrary to my request for faster shipping from which I would pay all expenses.

To top off the letter, Trevor states I might never get the card due to Covid-19. Not exactly any vote of confidence. So now I must wait up to a half month and go from there. Thus far, my impression of the company Unistellar is like a roller-coaster ride of ups and downs, highly mixed. I did get a PDF file with instructions on taking apart the telescope and replacing the micro sd card. it looks like a piece of cake. As far as the dealer OPT is concerned, my email went unresponsive. I believe they are simply standing by for a potential return and refund. OPT is an outstanding telescope dealer and have always backed their products.

Others have said companies are fast to take your thousands of dollars no matter where you're located, but when a problem happens, solutions are extremely slow in coming. So for now, the failed eVscope is still failed and I have full confidence that after the card is replaced with new software, the telescope will work flawlessly as advertised. It will be very exciting to begin deep sky imaging through light pollution.

Double Cluster in Perseus

Double Cluster in Perseus

At 3.7 and 3.8 magnitude, these two star clusters are bright enough to capture through heavy light pollution using the eVscope.

The famous double cluster is an ideal object to add to the list of visible and bright NGC objects, and makes a nice addition to the completed Messier catalog.

The two star clusters making up the Double Cluster are called NGC 869 (h Persei) and NGC 884 (Chi Persei). If you are further south (but still in the Northern Hemisphere), try looking for the Double Cluster in the evening in autumn or winter. For general reference, the Double Cluster is high in the sky when the Big Dipper is low, and vice versa. Because the Big Dipper is lowest in the northern sky on late autumn and early winter evenings, the Double Cluster is highest in the northern sky at these times. The Double Cluster is pretty much always visible at evening except in late spring and summer.

Right ascension 2h 20m
Declination 57° 08′
Apparent magnitude (V) 3.7 and 3.8

The position of h Persei’s is Right Ascension: 2h 19m; Declination: 57o 9′ north
Chi Persei’s position is Right Ascension: 2h 22.4m; Declination: 57o 7′ north

Bottom line: On an autumn of winter evening, scan between Cassiopeia and Perseus for the magnificent Double Cluster. At a distance of some 7,500 light-years, the stars in these two clusters are young, hot supergiant suns that are many thousands of times more luminous than our sun.

Link
http://www.waloszek.de/inhalt_astro_dso_ngc884_869_e.html

Celestron First Scope Simulation

Celestron First Scope Simulation Project

Let's have some fun with the Celestron FirstScope. Take some images of the moon with a hand-held digital camera and process the results with your computer's OS system software. Make a digital strip like old film. Try different views and just for fun, give one a green image intensifier appearance! Can you think of other ways the tiny telescope can act out its role as a changing chameleon? How can you mod it to think it's a big brother telescope? Stay tuned as we put the ultimately cute "cat's pajamas" through its paces!
Celestron FirstScope - Index
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-firstscope-index.html

Celestron FirstScope Full Moon

Celestron FirstScope
Full Moon Project

The Celestron FirstScope is ideal for shooting the Moon. However, you'll need to follow some basic rules to get decent results.

The telescope has a spherical mirror so high resolution with any significant magnification is a great challenge, however, going for the Full Moon at reasonable image scale is fully workable.

You'll need to heavily computer image process the result with sharpen, contrast and light/dark using the computers OS photo software. The result - Full Moon imaged through my Celestron FirstScope using a hand held SONY camera and processed with Apple system OS software. Lunar image shot in Beijing China from the ground steps terrace of a residential skyscraper in full view of light pollution.

Celestron FirstScope - Index
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-firstscope-index.html

Unistellar Evscope Update

Evscope update


Unistellar agreed to send out a micro sd card with updated software and a tool to open up the telescope to repair it. This was according to email received on Tuesday August 25th 2020.

However the next day, today, the shipment was held up. According to Trevor, he did not realize, per my shipping address, that I was located in Taiwan and apparently this poses some problems for their logistics. What problems I wonder? Therefore, there is more delay. How hard is it to send a tiny little micro sd card that weighs almost nothing?

It's also very strange that I contacted Unistellar previously, and got their permission to buy the telescope in the USA and use it in Taiwan. So there should be no problem and no delay. I wonder how long antics will go on? Unistellar is an unusual lot and I'm thinking of returning the telescope to the telescope dealer for a full refund.

Celestron FirstScope My Review

My personal review of the Celestron FirstScope, a tiny 3-inch f/4 Dobsonian mounted reflector telescope

This is one of the first tabletop telescopes

Introduction
The tiny telescope is so cute, just keeping it on the shelf may be enough for a conversation starter. The 3 inch f/4 spherical mirror of lesser optical quality won't win any awards and in fact you will need to process the Hell out if any astrophotos taken with it to get acceptable images. The included plastic eyepieces are best thrown in the garbage asap and replaced with new glass lens aspheric oculars from Svbony that work outstanding with this scope.

The rack & pinion has excellent tension and
outstanding smooth mechanical action, perfect
for EPs and cameras. Plus, the rack tension is
adjustable with two screws. However, when
the rack and pinion achieves focus with the EP,
the tube extends too far down and causes a very
large secondary mirror obstruction that severely
degrades the image.

Worth & Value
What good is the scope, you may ask... The scope, in spite of optical shortcomings, is a real gem. It costs about $60

Dob Mount
 The minuscule scope comes with the smoothest and easiest to use Dobsonian mount. Even the spirit of the great John Dobson would be pleased with its ease of its use. Objects are found by manual GOTO; a process of sight and point, then slosh around the scope in the general vicinity until the object is found in a low power eyepiece.

It works! Simple Analog
Actually, this is the only working telescope that I have now, amidst a plethora of larger and more costly telescopes, with some rigs priced around 20 grand! Those set idle, too complicated to use, too heavy to set up or take down, or with high tech failures. There is something to say about the reliability of a simple analog telescope with hands-on ability.

Small aperture telescopes seem to do better
with big city light pollution because they
collect less of it.  Only one planet is seen in
this light polluted central urban sky.

Known for Cuteness
Speaking of hands-on, this scope is known as the cat's pajamas for the cuteness factor alone. It comes bare bones, no finder scope, and no calibration screws for the primary mirror, but it's not really a problem - sight down the tube to find Heavenly objects, and the secondary mirror has 3 screws for collimation.

Lightweight Tabletop Telescope
The minuscule telescope can be handled with one hand, as its combined weight is only 4.3 pounds! Set it on a table. It sets up in 3 seconds. My other telescopes are too big and heavy to set up and take down.

Focuser & Lightweight
The focuser works flawless and can hold each of the entire line of lightweight 1.25-inch eyepieces and computer USB astro cams for astro imaging - or simply hold an iphone or android above the eyepiece to capture the Moon. The goal here is to find lightweight accessories so as not to upset fixed tube balance. For example, there is a lightweight accessory plastic finderscope that weighs only a fractional ounce that screws onto the tube.

No matter how the "too small" diagonal
mirror is positioned, the larger primary
mirror will not fit into full view. Plus, the
diagonal is is not properly elliptical
shaped so when it tilts at 45 degrees, the
mirror looks  irregular and is ill fitting.
When new, the diagonal mirror came
with fine scratches and a marred surface.

Optical Quality
It's not a perfect world and small cuteness comes with a price. The optics leave something to be desired. The primary mirror is F/4 but spherical. The secondary elliptical flat mirror is too small and geometrically misshapen, therefore does not show the entire primary mirror for calibration. Due to this, only certain aspheric eyepieces will give performance.

Secondary Mirror
Further inspection last night when I started to collimate it revealed a disappointing secondary mirror far too small (it won't show the entire primary mirror, about 30% is missing) and it has the wrong ellipse shape! - when tilted 45-degrees, it's not a circle! In dealing with these anomalies, it's a wonder we can get any image at all.

The Telescope that Could
But maybe, just maybe, this is the little telescope that could. The story of the Little Engine that Could In the tale, a long train must be pulled over a high mountain after its engine breaks down. Larger engines, treated anthropomorphically, are asked to pull the train; for various reasons they refuse. The request is sent to a small engine, who agrees to try. The engine succeeds in pulling the train over the mountain while repeating its motto: "I-think-I-can". The story of the little engine has been told and retold many times. The underlying theme is the same — a stranded train is unable to find an engine willing to take it on over difficult terrain to its destination. Only the little blue engine is willing to try and, while repeating the mantra "I think I can, I think I can", overcomes a seemingly impossible task.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Engine_That_Could

Stock Eyepieces
These eyepieces came with the telescope and are made of plastic lens and plastic upper barrels. The cheap plastic lenses melted on a hot summer day. While other quality eyepieces are engraved, these have a cheap paper sticker on the top. Throw these away asap. If you look through these, the view will be disappointing, fuzzy, and dim without focus.

Image Processing
Given the spherical optics and subsize misshapen secondary, you will need to try and make up for any defects somewhere. This is where image processing comes into play. By transferring the digital image to a computer, the system OS will usually have a photo app that can offer image sharpening, noise reduction,  color adjustment, gamma correction, with rotation and cropping. Also feel free to make corrections to the image with more than one level or iteration of processing, as needed.

Endearing Telescope
As both an amateur and professional astronomer for a half century, I have many uses for the Celestron FirstScope, doing experiments, testing lenses and optical configurations, use as a fast grab & go telescope that needs practically no setup time, plus running wild experiments and doing super fun projects. I've collected many telescopes and this one is a favorite.

Celestron FirstScope - Index
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-firstscope-index.html

Evscope Kiss of Death

Ordered from OPT because they had one in stock, the unfortunate brain dead less than smart telescope arrived well packed in a box surrounded by foam padding. Included were the tripod, a box of wrenches to adjust the primary mirror calibration and tripod, quick startup guide and a technical manual. I was prepared to be amazed, Unistellar's slogan, but the amazement will have to wait until troubleshooting and repairs are complete and the telescope gets Unistellar's confirmation of working approval.

EVSCOPE KISS OF DEATH
After five days of wrestling with the new eVscope from Unistellar and trying to get it to work, with back & forth correspondence with Unistellar and OPT, the scope finally locked up with the steady purple power button light, never changing to constant red which would indicate the scope is ready for use. The purple light is much like Microsoft Windows blue screen kiss of death.

I contacted Unistellar and corresponded with Trevor who quickly realized my telescope needs for a software update and that I would need the micro sd card with the latest and greatest incarnations of upgraded software, and a security tool to open the telescope for surgery. We (telescope and I) are waiting for the arrival of the card and tool to begin our telescope rescue with the needed brain surgery.

Someone should have a talk with telescope dealers who do not check their merchandise for functionality and suitability for resale. This is the second defective telescope I've received over the past couple years. What can we expect with the majority of industry products now made in China but not checked for functionality. According to Unistellar, the telescopes parts are apparently made in France or Europe, then assembled in China.

Celestron FirstScope Introduction

Celestron FirstScope and lens cap setting
on an IKEA table                       Mike Otis

Celestron FirstScope Project Corner

Introduction
This is my Celestron tabletop FirstScope that everyone said was a toy. In support of that premise, I did buy it from Toys'R'Us in Beijing for about $60 and it did come with plastic eyepieces, not just the barrel was plastic but also the actual lenses! No problem, they melted on one hot summer day and I replaced the two with a set of fine aspheric lens oculars bought online from SVBony which perform admirably.

Overview
The telescope comes without a finderscope, but with a focal length of 12 inches, it's not too much challenge to sight down the tube and find the Moon and bright planets. I have yet to adapt it for deep sky objects but it's definitely a project I would consider. You better stick with low power as the 3" f4 mirror is obviously left uncorrected and spherical, not parabolic which is needed for fine mirrors of short focal length. Nevertheless, I have conducted several ongoing projects with this telescope in Beijing, Shanghai and Taiwan and out of all my many telescopes this is the one I grab with one hand and have it setup in 3 seconds! The little telescope is not without its problems but it's a lot of fun, small and cute.

Projects
Stay tuned to this corner as I plan to do interesting projects with this scope. Don't expect anything too high tech as the secondary mirror is compromised and the telescope is definitely the underdog. Here's a list of some projects in the making. A checkmark indicates completed projects.

✔︎ * Telescope review
✔︎ * Upgrade the telescope
✔︎ * Full Moon imaging
✔︎ * Jupiter at 80,000 power
✔︎ * Green Image Intensifier simulation

✔︎ * Barlow tests
✔︎ * Focal Reducer experiments
✔︎ * Imaging through window glass

* Imaging with a computer cam

* Imaging with an electronic eyepiece

* Tips project

* Repair the secondary
* Eyepiece testing
* Image Processing with FirstScope images
* Connecting ASI224MC CMOS camera
* Solar astrophotography
* Planetary moons capture
* Observing spree
* List of bright objects to view
* Measure light pollution
* Build a mini astro weather station
* Using NightCap iPhone App
* Image gallery

Telescope Commercial Advertising Description
FirstScope pays tribute to the men and women who brought us one step closer to understanding the universe around us! In 1609, world-renowned Italian scientist, Galileo Galilei, introduced an elementary telescope to the growing astronomy community which sparked interest into the mysterious night sky for centuries to come. Four centuries later, Celestron offers the portable FirstScope Telescope. The FirstScope pays tribute to Galileo Galilei and many of history’s most notable astronomers and scientists by displaying their names around the optical tube. We honor the contributions of these men and women, who brought us one step closer to understanding the universe around us.

The FirstScope is a wonderful keepsake for anyone interested in astronomy. This quality Dobsonian style telescope features a 76 mm aperture reflector optical tube. FirstScope is an ideal entry level astronomical telescope. It is very easy to observe with, the user simply navigates the night sky by moving the tube in the direction of their desired object, making the viewing experience a snap! The compact design makes it easy enough to take with you on your next outdoor adventure. FirstScope is also stylish enough to be a decorative fixture on your bookshelf or desk. A high quality Dobsonian style stand with a 76 mm reflector optical tube make FirstScope an ideal entry level astronomical telescope. A portable and lightweight table-top design makes it easy to store, transport and setup your FirstScope Telescope. FirstScope is very easy to observe with, the user simply navigates the night sky by moving the tube in the direction of their desired object. The stylish and decorative design makes FirstScope a wonderful keepsake for anyone interested in astronomy.

The FirstScope Telescope by Celestron is a 76 mm (2.99-inch) aperture Newtonian Reflector Telescope on a single-arm Dobsonian Cradle Mount (table-top). Its easy-use and portability make it an ideal entry-level astronomical telescope. Expand your possibilities by adding the Celestron FirstScope Telescope Accessory Kit. The Celestron FirstScope Telescope - IYA Edition Features: Observing is quick and easy, simply navigate the night sky by moving the tube in the direction of your desired object. It’s portable! Take it with you on your next outdoor adventure with its compact and lightweight design. When not in use, its stylish enough to be a decorative fixture on your bookshelf or desk. Named official product of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. In 1609, world-renowned Italian scientist, Galileo Galilei, introduced an elementary telescope which sparked interest into the mysterious night sky for centuries to come. In 2009, four centuries later, Celestron introduced the FirstScope Telescope to pay tribute to Galileo Galilei and many of history’s most notable astronomers and scientists. Their names are on display around the optical tube. OPT Product Number: CE-21024 $54.95. Accessories kit CE-21024-ACC $22.25.

Specs
FirstScope Telescope -  Item # 21024
Manufacturer - Celestron
Country Origin - Made in China
Optical Design - Newtonian Reflector
Telescope type - Table-Top

Aperture 76mm (2.99")
Focal Length 300mm (12")
Focal Ratio 3.95
Camera/Eyepiece Connection 1.25" Nosepiece

Type of Eyepieces - plastic lenses
1.25-inch Eyepiece #1: H 20 mm  (0.79"), 15x magnification
1.25-inch Eyepiece #2: SR 4 mm (0.16"), 75x magnification

Highest Useful Magnification (50x/") - 150x
Lowest Useful Magnification (with a 1" fl ep) - 12x
Resolution (Rayleigh) - 1.83 arc seconds
Resolution (Dawes) - 1.53 arc seconds
Light Gathering Power (Compared to human eye) - 118x
Mount Design Single Arm Alt-Azimuth

Limiting Magnitude 11.8-13.1
http://www.twcac.org/Tutorials/limiting_magnitude_table.htm
http://www.twcac.org/Tutorials/magnify4.htm#Magnification%20Calculator

Warranty 2 Year Warranty
Instruction Manual PDF - Celestron Firstscope Model #21024
Software Starry Night Basic Edition (internet download)
2 Year Telescope Warranty

Review
https://telescopicwatch.com/celestron-21024-firstscope-telescope-review/
https://www.space.com/celestron-firstscope-76-telescope-review.html
http://www.scopereviews.com/page1ae.html
https://telescopeobserver.com/celestron-firstscope-telescope-review/

Celestron FirstScope - Index
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-firstscope-index.html

Celestron Firstscope Play

Unistellar
Another day gone by waiting for a reply from Unistellar to fix the faulty eVscope, now five days waiting for the a reply. I sent a new email in case the old one was lost.

Sky
The sky has become crystal clear, ideal for telescopic observing.

Celestron FirstScope
Up to Bat

The "Cat's Pajamas" is this adorable and immensely cute Celestron
FirstScope tabletop telescope bought at Toys'R"Us in Beijing China.
The 3-inch mirror completes its Dobsonian design, but it has no finder
cope or drive. It has a very smooth and slick Dobsonian mount which
is used mainly for land experiments, and solar/lunar/planetary astro
imaging with hand held cameras. Mike Otis

I have no working telescopes except the tabletop 3-inch Firstscope Dob reflector made in China. It has no drive, no finder, and the f4 mirror is spherical, not parabolic. Yet, it's a good land telescope and it takes very interesting lunar images like the one shown.

Celestron
I'm thinking about starting over with the CGXL and Celestron telescope to see if we can get it to work

Evscope
As the telescope is stuck on the steady purple LED and won't boot up to the red light, the scope likely has bad software and the fix may be a replacement of the micro SD card with updated programming

Toy?
Some claim the Celestron FirstScope is nothing more than a child's toy. Indeed, the throw-away eyepieces had worthless plastic lenses and melted during a hot day. Nevertheless, I used better eyepieces and decided to play around by creating a number of interesting projects. More to come so stay tuned.

Celestron FirstScope - Index
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-firstscope-index.html

Evscope New Permanent Problem

Evscope Problem
The telescope developed a new permanent problem. It won't start up. I took the eVscope out again and pushed the power-on button. The steady purple light came on. It never turned red. I tried the process numerous times and also waited short and long times. The result is always the same. No red light. I waited until the next day. Same problem. The telescope is stuck. Yes, it's fully charged. On the bottom of the telescope it says "model 1." Maybe this early model needs a software update. I contacted Unistellar - waiting for a reply.

Ultra Clear Sky

Tonight:
Ultra Clear Sky

A typhoon has passed nearby and pushed in ultra clean ocean air into the city, eradicating air pollution and smog. 

The air transparency is so clear, individual trees are seen on the distant mountains. This does not happen very often and is a sign that tonight will have exceptionally clear skies for telescope observing. The fast moving clouds are quickly passing overhead and the evening will start to clear. The night will be excellent to continue conducting tests with the Unistellar eVscope. The setting waxing crescent Moon in Virgo is only illuminated 25% and will not interfere with deep sky observations. The Celestron Sky Portal sky chart shows the Moon position at 6:25 pm.

Evscope Anomalies

The latest offering from Unistellar Optics is this massive all electronic 22-inch dob which
sets on a plastic alt-azimuth mount of John Dobson design. We are trying it out for beta
testing. It performs 100 times more powerful than a classical telescope which makes it
much like a 2,200-inch gigantic light bucket scope. It penetrates light pollution, concrete
walls and sides of mountains through redundant para-refractive indexing. Ok, just joking.

Unistellar eVscope

First Light is this 16 second exposure of the Helix
Nebula. The Enhanced Image app function crashed
before the exposure was complete and the Helix is
absent in the photo. By comparing the stars in the
image with other Helix Nebula photos, it's confirmed
the eVscope successfully found and centered the
location of the nebula in the Bortle 9+ sky.

After several days of trying to get the Unistellar telescope to work, the eVscope is still not working. Main problems are: can't connect to scope properly, wifi appears to drop out on the scope (not connected error), it disconnects during an operation, the app appears to have many

Rotating this Helix image from another
telescope confirms the stars line up with
the Unisteller photo. The Helix is NGC
7293 or Caldwell 63 and at 7.6 apparent
magnitude. Why the Helix? It was the only
object suggested for viewing from the sky
limited balcony.

connection issues with freeze up bugs, app crashes, and the scope is unstable and unusable. If you are lucky enough to get to enhanced vision, it will go for a few seconds (16 seconds) and then crash. Attached is a first light image of the Helix Nebula at 16 seconds just before it froze and enhanced vision stopped, then the notorious "not connected" error happened. However, the telescope did properly find the Helix Nebula and center it so for a short time, therefore goto worked so a brief thumbs up for that. I used an image from another telescope for comparison and by rotating the eVscope image, the brighter stars line actually up. I have contacted OPT and Unistellar and the big issue is still unresolved. I have also contacted other users of this telescope who all had similar issues, but still no fix for my telescope. Unistellar support is through email and requires several days of waiting for a reply. So far, the reply discusses issues but is not in any way troubleshooting the telescope for positive results. In any case, I'm still waiting for a reply. issues, but still no fix for my telescope. Unistellar support is through email and requires several days of waiting for a reply. So far, the reply discusses issues but is not in any way troubleshooting the telescope for positive results. In any case, I'm still waiting for a reply.