To configure the Polarie in a similar way, you have to buy the Counterweight Upgrade Kit plus the extension bar and counterweight. This alone will cost you about 900 USD. 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. This is a detail from one of the images I got. It’s a bit noisy, but you can see the three belt stars. The Great Nebula is at the top.

If you look closely, you’ll see the stars in the centre of the field are nice and round. However, in the corners they have been elongated away from the centre. This is a problem of the lens, and not the Polarie. On first impressions, the overall build is of very good quality, although the polarscope's illuminator could do with an upgrade. The scope's red light mode is effective in preserving night vision. I set the Polarie up on an old tripod that is topped with a really heavy tri-pan head (Bogen 4037). The head is designed to carry my old medium-format camera and any lens I can attach, so no capacity worries there. Also, the head is capable of tilting nearly vertical. I attached the Polarie to the big Bogen head, leveled the tripod and rotated the head to point toward Polaris (see the connection?). Next, I tilted the head so that I could see Polaris through the polar alignment sight.Note that without the counterweight upgrade kit, though, you cannot have the polar scope mounted at the same time with your camera. Performances The Vixen Optics Polarie is designed to work with wide-angle lenses to image star fields and the Milky Way. Featuring a built-in compass and latitude meter (which are helpfully illuminated in red light for set up at night), alignment is very straightforward – you'll need to locate the celestial pole through a sight hole or polarscope, with takes moments to achieve. There’s also a Vixen PF-L Assist phone app for iOS and Android. We were able to align on Polaris (Alpha (α) Ursae Minoris) in seconds using the plastic sighting tool supplied and the smooth optional Fine Adjustment head.

When you see beautiful things, you may want to take a photo to keep the image. Why not record the beauty of the starry night sky? There is also an excellent free smartphone app (Vixen PF-L Assist, available for iOS and Android) to make polar alignment really simple.

My second photo

Shooting with a wide-photo lens is easy by just locating Polaris at the center of the sight tube finder's field of view. It is fitted into the accessory shoe on the POLARIE U. 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 Polarie U was designed to look similar to a camera lens and, therefore, fits easily into camera bags. The “U” in Polarie U represents the product’s structural cross-section. It is also realively light at only 575g. Polar alignment is very easy with this astrophotography mount. The basic kit comes with a laser, which you just have to point at Polaris or the south celestial pole. If lasers are banned in your country, you can get the kit with the polar scope instead ( Basic Kit A). Some other useful accessories are the V and Z mounts and the equatorial base, which will make polar alignment even easier. To change the settings, a communication terminal that can be connected to Wi-Fi, like smartphones, and application software are required. We mounted the Polarie, via the supplied adjustable wedge, onto our own Manfrotto #132 tripod using a standard 3/8-inch tripod bush; a 1/4-inch bush and a removal tool are also included in the kit. 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.The other thing to consider is that with gloves, particularly when using a ball head with a large base, the thumbscrews to fix the camera mount on the Polarie are difficult to operate. Battery Type And Battery Life Enough about the unit itself, let’s get onto the interesting stuff. The results. Test photos – and a short animation Over the course of the sequence, it became apparent that my polar alignment was not perfect. It was good enough for a 60 second exposure, but over four hours the LMC had drifted away. Again, aligning the Polarie accurately had been a challenge. It looked like I hadn’t been able to do it as accurately as I’d hoped. Processing In addition, it is equipped with a camera connecting port (shutter release terminal) that controls the camera shutter in the shooting with t