ASIAIR

I have been using this app and device for several years, now. I got this soon as version 1.0. came out about 5 years ago. Still works great. It is far and away the easiest way to take long exposure photos of the night sky, from stars and galaxies to distant nebula with a variety of telescope setups. I used to use a laptop to run the telescope, camera and mount, which required a lot of battery power and software was complex and error prone. With this tiny device which easily runs on a small portable battery all night, is a tiny box that fits on scope and simplifies everything. At first it was a bit limited, but still was fully functional. Only limitation which is also its strength is that is is designed to support users that use zwo brand astronomical cameras and focusers. This means that rather than trying to partially support a wide range of cameras it supports these cameras really well - super easy to use. You can focus, align the mount for polar alignment, switch filters, precisely aims telescope at any of the well known astronomical objects (and you can define your own custom objects)and have it automatically take a series of photos on it all night, including even flipping the mount when it switches from eastern to western hemispheres of the sky, then turning off device and returning scope to home position when it is done. I am particularly impressed with the support provided. They maintain a facebook page and respond to questions or comments very quickly. They also welcome comments for new features or options. Now it features autofocus, a video mode for photos of planets, and continues to perfect guiding, and other features. Highly recommend for people wanting to take night sky photos in a simple straightforward and highly automated way. You no longer have to stay up all night to take great photos of these distant objects.

This app can make astrophotography a very pleasant experience. I do a Starsense Auto-align, a quick polar align in Asiair, find my target in the app’s planetarium, start guiding, start imaging, and go to sleep. I wake up to my scope in a safe position, with lots of good data, every single time. No expensive equipment rammed into my CGX, no torn or unplugged wires, no incorrect slew positions. Just perfectly clear 300s exposures of whatever I fancy that night. I do have some requests though. While you can focus a separate guide scope in the guiding interface, please add a real focus utility for the guide cam. Also, and this one is important, please implement notifications for issues. It’s nuts that there aren’t any, and even though the Asiair is great, it’s almost a reason to go back to Nina. This hasn’t happened, but it would be areal letdown if something does get disconnected, or auto-focus fails, etc., and we don’t even know.

I was very pleased the first time out with the ASIAIR Pro. I honestly expected some bugs, but all the major functions worked flawlessly. I was able to greatly reduce my cables and clean up my setup, and it connected to my iOptron CEM25P mount without any problems. I don’t need SharpCap anymore, because the ASIAIR Pro polar aligns just as easy if not easier. But the thing that is REALLY NICE is that any GOTO automatically takes a quick picture of the field of view then the ASIAIR Pro plate solves to find out where the scope is really pointing and then goes to the object you want and centers it for you! AMAZING! Even Plate Solving is built in. NO MORE STAR ALIGNMENT NEEDED! And even the auto guiding was easy to set up, and it worked great. This little unit replaced my laptop computer, four software packages (SharpCap, APT, PHD2, and Stellarium). The auto run sequence setup and execution works perfectly. Camera cooling management also works perfectly. The object data base is very nice and covers everything I wanted to capture. The Preview and Focus assist functions greatly reduced my setup time. In fact, with the auto plate solving/re-center, easy acquisition setup, easy preview and focus management, I literally saved 2 hours on my night of imaging. And I never even thought about taking my laptop computer out of its bag. I had the previous ASIAIR, but the Pro model changes everything for me. Now I can spend the night capturing images instead of setting thing up and constantly adjusting things. Great job guys!