All my life I have been fascinated by the stars, astronomy, anything space related and photography.
When planning my next adventure we decided to visit South America , a part of the world we’ve not been too.
We settled on a trip to Peru, got it all planned and then heard about Uyuni in Bolivia.
10,000 square kilometres of dried up salt bed at around 12,000 feet and one of the darkest places on earth for astrophotographers. This place was a must to add to the itinerary.
Of course my research started to trigger adverts to appear and suddenly there was a device making claims that it could capture images of galaxies and nebulae.
I’d like to take you back maybe 20 years when I had an amazing telescope called an LX-80 .. it was my Jodrell Bank and certainly too big to bring in the house so was strapped to the apple tree in the back garden. I was able to set it up and the computer would align the scope with a planet and using a small CMOS sensor and some software I was able to see our planets.
It was totally dependant of course on the weather and inevitably I eventually sold it for lack of use. You can see images from all those years ago here
So back to the adverts I saw promoting a small device, claiming to weigh 850g, and capable of grabbing images from our universe.
Now before I tell you about the device there are a couple of things you should know as this helps what I am about to share even more incredible.
I have a relatively small back garden within an urban area surrounded by houses, trees and street lights. Also my view of the night sky is fairly limited when you consider obstacles from the horizon to roof and tree top levels.
One final thing to set the scene.
Heard of the Bortle Scale? No? Neither had I until recently, but it indicates how dark the sky is.
The Bortle scale is a nine-level numeric scale used to measure the brightness of the night sky at a specific location. Created by amateur astronomer John E. Bortle in 2001, it helps stargazers and astrophotographers quantify light pollution and determine how well they can observe celestial objects.
The 9 Classes of Sky Darkness
The scale ranges from Class 1, which represents the darkest, most pristine natural skies on Earth, to Class 9, which represents heavily light-polluted inner-city skies.
Bortle 1 Excellent Dark SkyPristine; Milky Way is brilliant and casts shadows on the ground.
Bortle 2 Typical Dark SkyHighly detailed Milky Way; airglow may be visible along the horizon.
Bortle 3 Rural Sky Some light pollution at the horizon; Milky Way still looks complex.
Bortle 4 Rural/Suburban Light pollution domes are visible; Milky Way is visible but lacks fine detail.
Bortle 5 Suburban Sky Milky Way is very faint or invisible near the horizon; clouds are brighter than the sky.
Bortle 6 Bright Suburban Milky Way only visible at the zenith (straight up); sky looks grayish-white.
Bortle 7 Suburban/Urba Entire sky looks grayish-white; Milky Way is invisible.
Bortle 8 City Sky Sky is bright enough to read a book under; only the brightest stars are visible.
Bortle 9 Inner-City Sky Sky is ablaze with light; only the Moon, bright planets, and a few stars can be seen.
Where I live the Bortle Scale is 7.
So I contacted Dwarf Labs about my trip to Uyuni in Bolivia and they sent me a Dwarf Mini and tripod. This article and any of my comments, good or bad are my own along with images I have taken.
The Dwarf mini arrived in these boxes within a week and everything was well packed.
I downloaded the Dwarf Lab app and that night placed the Dwarf Mini on the floor of my patio.
I would describe the Dwarf Mini as a highly light sensitive telescope on steroids. This allows the ordinary person to join the ranks of NASA and both Hubble and James Webb Telescope users, in capturing invisible views of the night sky from your home.
The device does it all .. you turn it on and connect to the app. It creates a WiFi connection. Then you point the scope glass towards the sky, then you press focus and suddenly on your phone you can see stars that are not visible to the naked eye.
I then went into the atlas section and looked at recommended points in the sky according to the app and I selected M51 and pressed to start taking pics … I’ve not changed any preferences at this stage .. just left it on auto.
What you see here is before I used Lightroom on my phone.
This is the result!
This should be impossible!
For the next few days, I have been practising in readiness for my trip to Peru and Bolivia, where hopefully the night sky will be dark and clear.
Here are some of my processed images so far.
The Dwarf Mini is not exclusive to me .. you can get one too from here
Look out for more posts of my travels and in particular when I’ve been to Uyuni in Bolivia.
