Hyperia, a smart telescope redefining Astrophotography

The company Vaonis, based in Montpellier, today announced the launch of the flagship of its range of connected observation stations: Hyperia, a fully automated instrument, equipped with the very latest technological advances in astrophotography. Hyperia is aimed not only at lovers of the field but also at the general public wishing to capture the most beautiful images of the starry sky at the push of a button. Hyperia is regarded to this day as the most powerful automated telescope in the world! For 45,000 €, does he keep this promise? Here is an overview of the revolution offered by this new born of the French company. 

A Fully Automated Telescope: Why?

Astronomical observation and astrophotography are exciting activities. Although they arouse dreams and wonder, they remain above all activities which require a minimum of time to be devoted in order to develop the mechanisms allowing to be able to be able to become familiar with the material and thus be able to output satisfactory images.

A question then arises: At what level do we want to invest in an activity? For most everyday leisure activities, there are many solutions. Example: if we want to buy a drone for the pleasure of taking superb aerial images and not for the pleasure of controlling the piloting or the pleasure of making it, we will more naturally go for a drone ready to fly with an assisted flight rather than a racing drone sold as a kit where you will have to configure everything yourself.

Being able to make astronomy accessible to people wishing to practice this hobby without devoting themselves to it full time was therefore one of the motivations of Cyril Dupuy, founder of Vaonis.

Taking pictures of the most beautiful objects of the starry sky from the balcony of his apartment and by pressing a single button was the crazy bet of the first telescope offered by Vaonis in 2018, known as the Stellina. In 2020, the Montpellier company was able to raise more than 2 million dollars on the Kickstarter platform for the financing of a second miniature connected telescope, the Vespera, which, shortly after received the highest distinction awarded by the CES of Las Vegas "Best of Innovation CES 2021".

In 2021, it is the turn of a third even more ambitious project to see the light of day, or rather to see the night: Hyperia.

 

Hyperia: the most advanced smart telescope

Inspired by the titan of Greek mythology "Hyperion" son of Heaven and Earth, the Hyperia telescope lives up to its name very well on several levels:

A 150 mm diameter refractor telescope

Weighing around 75 kilograms, this instrument has a size of 2.10 meters when unfolded! These titanic characteristics can be explained by the optical instrument it houses: with a diameter of 150 mm and a focal length of 1000 mm, Hyperia allows both to take images of the deep sky (galaxies, star clusters , nebulae) as well as planetary objects (moon, saturn, jupiter ... etc).

The telescope is composed of an apochromatic triplet open at F / 7, with increased performance for astrophotography with very reduced optical defects.

At present, the choice of lenses making up the bezel has yet to be defined.

 

By abuse of language, we speak here of a telescope. In reality, Hyperia is strictly speaking a refracting telescope since it consists of lenses and not mirrors.

A state-of-the-art camera

In astrophotography, choosing the right camera is just as important as the telescope. Vaonis has chosen for this one of the best CMOS sensors on the market for astrophotography. This is the monochrome Sony IMX455: a full-frame 24x36 Back Illuminated sensor with a resolution of 61 million pixels!

For purists, this sensor has pixels of 3.76 µm, a quantum efficiency of 91%, an ultra-low read noise (1.5 e-), a dynamic (Full-Well Capacity) of 51ke- or of 200 ke- in Bin x2, and a 16-bit ADC converter!

Vaonis announces that Hyperia's camera can be replaced in order to benefit from the most recent CMOS sensors.

Filters to see the universe the Hubble way

Since Hyperia's camera is monochrome, it requires the use of filters to restore the true or false colors of a nebula, a galaxy, etc.

Hyperia is equipped with Sulfur (SII), H-Alpha (Ha) and Oxygen (OIII) filters to capture the most abundant types of light in the Universe and thus reveal the sky in the same colors as the famous images of the NASA's Hubble Space Telescopes!

A cooling system

At this level of performance, a cooling stage for the camera is essential in order to guarantee stable images free from parasitic electronic noise. For Hyperia, the cooling system is equipped with a double Peltier stage reaching a temperature down to -35 ° C below ambient temperature.

With Hyperia, the images will therefore be preprocessed after application of calibration files (flat, dark and offset); files very familiar to astrophotographers.

State-of-the-art motorization

Current professional observatories equip their telescopes with direct drive (Direct Drive) where an electric motor directs the telescope without any additional mechanical part (chain, belt, gear, etc.). This technology is that adopted by Hyperia and allows to deliver a precision and a top-flight pointing speed.

For the initiated, Hyperia has an Altazimutale mount equipped with a field de-rotator.

A foolproof telescope

The outer shell is made of Zircal: it is an alloy of aluminum, zinc, copper, magnesium and chromium used in particular in the aerospace industry for its protection against wear and corrosion. and the heat. An IP53 certification provides protection against dust and splashes.

 

Astrophotography accessible at your fingertips

Like its big brother Stellina, Hyperia does not require any intervention from its user. A simple press on the single blue button allows the telescope to initialize, to locate itself geographically and to point towards the object of the sky which one wishes to immortalize.

Equipped with a bluetooth connection and a Wifi connection, Hyperia can be controlled remotely like a professional astronomical observatory. It is not for nothing that Vaonis calls Hyperia a hybrid instrument halfway between the connected telescope and the astronomical observatory.

Once after having programmed the object of the sky and the time during which it is desired to photograph it, the user can either decide to watch in real time the image processed by the telescope and sent back to his smartphone / tablet or either return to his occupations and wait for the final result.

At the end of the session, the image processing is entirely carried out by Hyperia. However, the user can choose to recover the recorded raw images and process them himself with his own software.

Below are the first images made by a Hyperia prototype.

The Tarantula Nebula captured in false colors (SHO, Hubble palette) Credit: Vaonis

The performances of Hyperia make it possible to capture galaxies, nebulae as well as objects of the solar system such as the moon. Credit: Vaonis

NGC 253. Credit: Vaonis

The telescope of the future?

 

Credit: Vaonis

With these previous products, Vaonis offered a new way of discovering astronomy and astrophotography. With Hyperia, it wishes to offer an extraordinary level of performance that will also delight the most demanding users.

Hyperia is unique in its kind since it combines high-end optical and electronic components supported by a powerful intelligent automation system designed specifically for the general public, of which Vespera and Stellina are the precursors.

Obviously, the design of a telescope of French excellence has a cost: from 45,000 € for a delivery time expected between 12 and 18 months. A price which, in absolute terms, remains extremely high and will not satisfy all budgets! The telescope of the future accessible to all is not yet here, but we understand here that Vaonis first wishes to assert itself before being able to one day, we hope, be able to offer a future model at a more attractive price.

Finally we will finish by specifying that Hyperia is for the moment in the state of launch. We will have to wait until 2023/2024 before the first official releases.

If Hyperia is not the general public telescope of the future by its price range, it is undeniably the telescope of the future by its way of redefining the astrophotography and assisted astronomical observation of tomorrow. It is always satisfying to see that a French company manages to offer a technological innovation of this scale, unique in the world!

To find out more about Hyperia: : https://vaonis.com/hyperia/fr/

Warning: Following certain remarks, we clarify that this article is in no way sponsored or financed by Vaonis. AstroSpace's motto is to highlight unique work (if possible from the French community) in the field of astronomy / astrophotography.