Purveyor of optics Beaverlab has unveiled its an inexpensive telescope for wannabe star-gazers: the Finder TW2.
The company sent us one to try out, and our results were… mixed.
The predecessor of the TW2 is the TW1, which can be picked up for $369 in Pro guise. The TW2 will retail at $499 or can be purchased for $329 as an early bird special via the product’s Indiegogo page.
As with all such funding efforts, we’d have to add a note of caution when dropping cash on something like Indiegogo or similar Kickstarter-like projects. There is no guarantee that anything will arrive, and what does arrive might not resemble what a customer was expecting.
That said, our review unit seemed very complete, although there were a few issues with the instructions. More on those later.
We were sent the whole kit, which consisted of a tripod to mount the telescope, the telescope itself, and the DS1 image capture device. There was also a handy bag to carry the hardware.
Assembling the telescope was straightforward. Erect the tripod, attach the telescope and arm for tilting, plug in the TW1 image capture device, which felt like a compact digital camera from a previous era, attach the star finder, and away you go. It’s very simple to set up and ideal for a novice.
The telescope itself has an optical focal length of 500mm, which can be adjusted by a knob on the side, and the optical aperture is 82mm. It is not huge by any stretch of the imagination, but it is good enough for a beginner.
The wheels start to come off with the DS1 image capture device, which does the heavy lifting in terms of image processing. It has a 5-inch touchscreen that can be angled upwards, which, according to Beaverlab, “Eliminates the need to lean over, change positions, or capture through small eyepieces.”
Except you do have to lean over. The star finder is a fixed cylinder mounted to the side of the telescope. Therefore, the user is required to contort themselves to peer through the star finder to make sure the telescope is pointed in roughly the correct direction.
Beaverlab said this about the star finder: “We understand your concern about the fixed star finder. We’ll consider this feedback for future iterations. In the meantime, we will plan to provide instructional videos to help users optimize their star-finding process.”
Furthermore, there is no scope for fine-tuning – there are only single controls for pan and tilt, which means small adjustments to view distant objects are very difficult. The lack of focusing tools other than the focal length is also maddening.
And then there is the DS1 image capture device itself, which uses JPG for its files. We queried Beaverlab about this – surely there must be some way to store data in a less lossy format? It appears not. The company told us: “We chose the JPG format because it efficiently compresses image files, which allows for quicker processing and storage.
“While RAW provides higher quality, JPG is more user-friendly for quick viewing and sharing,” Beaverlab said.
Indeed, there’s a lot that can be done on the DS1 itself to remove noise and tidy up images. As is the custom these days, the device features AI-infused image proces