Binoculars are evolving and their appeal continues to expand, and the Vaonis Hestia is a perfect example. It was first announced nearly a year ago, billed as the world’s first smartphone-based telescope. Astronomy is supposed to be more accessible than ever – and I’ve been trying it stargazing.
Hestia is the latest in a wave of new smart telescopes that have entered the world of astronomy in recent years: Vaonis itself already produces the Vespera smart telescope, which can automatically detect what’s visible in deep space at any given moment based on your location and automatically change its orientation to better view the selected galaxy, nebula or distant planet. Oh, and it takes pictures too – it’s simple astrophotography.
The Vaonis Hestia is a simpler and significantly cheaper proposition than the Vespera – you have to manually find distant objects in the sky above, and its magnification is only 25x. However, it is a reasonable choice for those new to astrophotography.
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One reason is that it’s cheap: the Hestia kit, which includes a tripod, costs just $399 / £329. This is much cheaper than the best smart telescopes, which are usually 10 times more expensive. You can save a bit by buying a Hestia without a tripod if you already own one; however, the Vaonis tripod is custom designed for Hestia.
“Smartphone-based” means that Hestia uses your smartphone’s camera, rather than its own image sensor and built-in memory. That’s certainly a cost-cutting factor, and the best camera phones these days are pretty darn good anyway, so the design choice makes perfect sense.
In no time, I was getting great photos of the moon with Hestia—images that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible by simply pointing the phone at the night sky.
The product was actually launched in time for the Great North American Eclipse in April, and our US mobile editor Phil Berne took it along for a ride when he photographed the eclipse, complete with a solar filter (added accessory).
As for my own experience with Vaonis Hestia, it’s been a mixed bag.
We start with Hestia
Vaonis Hestia is a book-like device with a small eyepiece on top that helps you position your smartphone’s camera lens for close-up views of the sun, moon and deep space. I started with the full moon because it is the easiest object in the night sky to locate.
You secure the phone in place by setting up two magnetic holders that snap onto the Hestia. It’s basically a universal holder that will hold any regular phone, although you might struggle with a more robust folding phone. My personal phone is a Google Pixel 6 that tucks in well.
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Adjusting Hestia’s angle using the tripod head to get the moon in the center of the frame takes a bit of nudging – there are no fine point adjustments so it’s a bit of trial and error. At 25x zoom, any slight adjustment to the composition will straight up throw it off, plus the moon will quickly move out of your frame, so you’ll have to make regular adjustments.
Such high magnifications are also an advantage if you’re a fan of time-lapses: The moon will work its way from one side of your view to the other in a matter of minutes. By including details such as trees or buildings in the shot, around and in front of the moon (easily done at moonrise or moonset), your photos and timelapses will only become more dynamic.
You can use your regular camera app to take photos. However, Hestia’s optical design flips the image of the moon, which is not corrected on your smartphone – you’ll need to run Vaonis’ Gravity app to optimize and correct the image.
The downside of optimizing your image in Gravity is that the photo resolution isn’t as high as using your phone’s camera app – I really wish my photos had more pixels for even better detail.
When you’re ready to take your first photo of the month, you simply press the capture button and a few seconds later, after the app stabilizes the image, your first photo appears on the screen – and wow!
The detail is super impressive (see below). You can make out craters and surface details that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye, or by zooming in with your phone (even the Samsung Galaxy’s Space Zoom – and the photos taken with the Vaonis Hestia are real).
It only took me a few minutes from opening the app from scratch to get the immersive photo above – impressive stuff. However, I started running into a few issues while trying out the different shooting options in the Android version of Gravity with my Pixel 6.
Great hardware, but an app that needs improvement
The experience may differ between the iOS and Android versions of the app and depending on which handset you are using. I’ve only tried Hestia with my Pixel 6 and my experience has been mixed.
My first photos of the month were amazing. I needed to quickly adjust the white balance because the moon was too warm and manually adjust the exposure because the automatic mode often rendered the moon too bright in the shot, but these adjustments are easy to make in the app and the basic editor. and overall I was able to work with the Hestia just fine for one-shots and the results were great.
Then I tried the time lapse mode. It should be possible to create a timelapse of the moon moving across the frame in a matter of minutes – but I couldn’t.
It seems like you have to manually take every photo in the time-lapse sequence, which is a real pain – who wants to tap the photo button every 10 seconds over the course of 10 minutes? The timelapse mode should be automated between the start and end of the sequence.
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Even if I had the patience to take a photo once every 10-20 seconds throughout the sequence, I couldn’t because the app kept freezing and crashing during the image stabilization process.
The most photos I got in a time-lapse sequence before the app froze was six or so – hardly enough for dynamic time-lapse. It even froze many times on single photos and I regularly needed to close and re-open the app.
Once I had my fill of photographing the moon, I went into deep space mode. You’ll get a list of galaxies, nebulae, and distant planets, along with information about which ones are visible based on your time and location.
However, the hard work of locating these objects in deep space is up to you, and it’s the old school silent telescope method. Some will enjoy the thrill of the chase, but you don’t get the automatic convenience of a smart telescope, nor is there a step-by-step guide on how to find the object.
In addition to photographing the sun and moon, Hestia requires a steep learning curve for beginners. As a result, I’ve limited my experience with Hestia to the Moon and will try to explore deep space with Hestia another day, hopefully once Gravity’s few quirks and technical hiccups are worked out.
I still recommend the Vaonis Hestia, especially for close-ups of the moon. If you’re like me, you’ll soon be into capturing the moon in its various phases – I can’t guarantee what your experience will be beyond that.