Smart telescopes are incredibly clever and make deep-sky astrophotography easier than ever. One of our favorite smart telescopes, the Unistellar eVscope 2, has a huge $1,000 off for Black Friday at various retailers.
Save $1,000 on the Unistellar eVscope 2 at Unistellar, Amazon, Best Buy and BHPhoto right now.
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The eVscope 2 also features a high-quality Nikon eyepiece if you prefer a more traditional viewing experience, alongside the ability to photograph the night sky. All you need to do to get going is mount the telescope onto the tripod, press the power button and connect it to your smartphone or tablet — it’s that easy.
Once you’re set up, you’ll see which objects are visible in the sky based on your time and location, and once you click “GoTo”, the telescope will automatically slew to that object for you to observe and start imaging. Even if you have no knowledge of the night sky or telescopes, anyone can use this telescope.
During our full Unistellar eVscope 2 review, we found that it really comes into its own when you use the enhanced image building mode, which takes multiple exposures and stacks them in real-time, so that you can then save them as a single image to share or download the files to your computer to process manually in more powerful software.
These scopes excel at deep-sky objects and are less suited to planets, so you’re better off getting an observational telescope if you want good views of the planets.
Key features: Reflector optical design, 4.5-inch (114mm) aperture, f/3.9 focal ratio, 19.8lbs (9kg) total weight including tripod, alt-azimuth mount.
Price history: We’ve seen it as low as $3,749 before, but otherwise, this is the cheapest we’ve seen it.
Price comparison: Amazon: $3,999 | Best Buy: $3,999 | Unistellar: $3,999
Reviews consensus: Our review concluded: “Unistellar has clearly gone over each tiny aspect of the eVscope 2’s design and every inch feels and looks premium. An all-encompassing system allows newcomer astronomers to navigate quickly to popular celestial objects and includes a 7.7MP camera built in with intelligent enhanced imaging techniques to capture detailed images of the heavens. Though it has an electronic eyepiece, traditional astronomers may miss an optical eyepiece.”
LiveScience: ★★★★½ | Space: ★★★★½
Featured in guides: Best telescopes, Best smart telescopes
Buy it if: You want to collect celestial subjects and photograph the cosmos using your smartphone, and you don’t have much knowledge of the night sky.
Don’t buy it if: You prefer an observational eyepiece for a more traditional viewing experience, or you’re a beginner and are looking for an affordable entry-level telescope.
Check out our other guides to the best telescopes, binoculars, cameras, star projectors and much more.
