eVscope | 100 times more powerful than a classical telescope

About this project

Many of us are curious to see the mysteries of the universe...

...Unfortunately, most objects are too faint to be seen in a normal telescope

Unistellar's eVscope

As Seen Through the eVscope

M51 "Whirlpool Galaxy" and M27 "Dumbbell Nebula"
What People are Saying About the eVscope

Awards & Recognition

So How Does This work ?

Unistellar’s Enhanced Vision is a patent-pending technology that is based on the accumulation of light over short periods of time using a low light sensor, as well as on our proprietary algorithms of image processing that run on an on-board calculation module. The resulting amplified image is projected at infinite focus into the eye of the observer with 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, creating a genuine and live experience of sky observation. Sensor settings and image processing parameters are automatically adjusted.

Autonomous Field Detection for a Smart Turn-key Telescope

The Autonomous Field Detection (AFD) software is a patent-pending high accuracy sky recognition and telescope orientation technology. It automatically detects stars in the field of view and identifies its pointing direction by a comparison with a 20 million star coordinates database. Coupled with magneto-accelerometers and with a motorized mount, AFD allows the eVscope to automatically align with celestial coordinates and accurately pinpoint and identify any object in the sky. Anytime, users can get contextual information on the pointed objects on their smartphone.

This comet could never have been spotted by a non-expert amateur without AFD

In Partnership with SETI Institute – eVscope Connects You to the Scientific Community

Campaign mode is developed in partnership with SETI Institute to allow every eVscope user to become a citizen scientist. In the case of an upcoming transient event (asteroid flyby, supernova, comets, transits of satellites,…), you will receive an observation request from scientists directly on your smartphone. Coordinates and instructions are wirelessly transferred to the eVscope, which will automatically point the astronomical event and connect the eVscope with a network of thousands of users all contributing to scientific research.

Here is how it works in practice:

Technical specs

The Portability of the eVscope

eVscope's Control App

Unistellar’s App, currently under development, enables you to wirelessly control the eVscope (Bluetooth or Wifi). It runs on Android, iOS, Windows, Mac or Linux. You can choose between beginner and expert mode. In beginner mode, everything is done automatically: after the automatic alignment procedure completes itself, simply choose an object and the telescope will point to it, you can then save pictures, record videos, or add contextual information. In expert mode everything can be set manually: choose the sky region for alignment, point manually anywhere in the sky, set the sensor sensitivity and exposure time, adjust noise reduction and gamma curve.

Note: For the sake of clarity, we didn't overlay our night filter on these views of the app. Night filter dims the light of the smartphone so your eye stays sensitive to the fainter lighting of the night and nightsky objects.

Unistellar Founders

Development Stage

The two patent-pending technologies at the heart of the eVscope are already working on our prototype: the Enhanced Vision software proved its power during this summer’s many demonstrations on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. For instance, the Automated Field Detection software allowed us to readily pinpoint faint objects (Pluto, Comets) and display contextual information.

Presentation of the functional prototype we demonstrated this summer:


PLAY

Today, the hardware integration challenges of the final product design are also solved. We now need your support to start pre-series prototypes, beta testing, and finally, mass production and delivery. We will take advantage of this hardware industrial time to make our software more robust and user friendly, as well as to finish our simple-to-use smartphone-control app.
Evolution of the eVscope
Completion Timeline

Opening new Frontiers for Exploration, Entertainment, and Citizen Science

Unistellar also hopes to bring the wonders of astronomy back to city dwellers, most of whom have lost touch with the wonders of the night sky. Many more objects—most far, far more wondrous and beautiful than Pluto—are now well within viewing range of casual astronomers. Comets, extra-galactic supernovae, fast near-Earth asteroids, and much more —they’re out there every night, just above you in the sky, and they’re inviting you to have a look. Take them up on that invitation and your life will never be the same. 

Risks and challenges

The development of an innovative consumer product comes with inherent risks and challenges. In order to minimize them, our development was made of constant iterations between our lab and the field.

In our last stages of development, we committed ourselves to make our prototypes with components that are readily available in large amounts from suppliers. At the same time, we regularly demonstrated our advancements to put consumer feedback in the loop. This method culminated this summer when we embarked on a big demo tour on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Before asking for support on Kickstarter we solved all hardware integration challenges in our final product design and tested all key software functions.

We also analyzed the remaining work with different industry experts in software and hardware as well as with our components suppliers, and together we came to the conclusion that the tasks to come were standard industrialization tasks.

These industrialization tasks are made following documented methods, best practices and standards that good engineers and industry experts are used to following (like choosing the right suppliers, building stock for relevant components, etc...). This allowed us to draw the Completion Timeline we advertise.