My Stellina is broken - after 2 years of great service

[smp]

I am very sorry to report that My Stellina is broken after only 2 years of great service.

Last Wednesday, I took it out to practice Solar Observing setup and observation. By the time I got it out, the sky was turning somewhat milky, but I figured that I'd give it a go anyway. Not surprisingly, it had difficulty acquiring the Sun, and I gave it up.

The next day, I got out again. This time nice clear sky. The Stellina had difficulty acquiring the Sun. It appeared not to be tracking while the Sun moved on away from where it was pointing. I tried helping it manually during acquisition, and after several attempts finally got an image, but the image marched steadily off the screen without manual assistance. Clearly something was quite wrong.

I left the scope out for the rest of the day, to see if night observing was also affected - in anticipation of my upcoming failure report to Adorama / Vaonis.

In the evening, I experienced all my normal easy initialization as usual. I shot a quick image of the Moon, then got a late-in-the-season image of Orion, then got an image of the Double Cluster in Perseus. I was elated, thinking that for some reason the Solar observing mode software was at fault. I wet over to get an image of M1, and it started out fine. After a while, I saw that the image updates were taking a long time to come in. For me, this is usually an indication of clouds moving in, so I went outside to check the sky. The sky was perfect for observing - and the gear grinding sounds that accompanied the scope doing its tracking maneuvers were loud and frightening.

On Friday, I first tried Vaonis, of course, but I was too late for their Friday hours - they leave for the weekend at 1:30 PM local time and I was doing this late in the morning here. So, I'm unable to speak with the good folks in France until Monday, at least.

I spent some hours online and on the phone with Customer Service at Adorama. They have my purchase record, and we see that they shipped my Stellina to me on March 9, 2022. The 2 year warranty has gone past by several days. The person I was speaking to at Adorama was very courteous and professional, but sorry, you have to go to Vaonis on this issue.

Now, panic is setting in. With the Eclipse approaching, and a broken scope that will take who knows how long to ship to France to be repaired and shipped back, I decided to look for what is available these days. I had a great surprise to find that the Stellina is no longer offered for sale at Vaonis, and only 1 or 2 of their Resellers here in the US have any in stock - for the original price of $4000. What is available is the Vespera line, with the original Vespera still available (but about to fall off the list), the Vespera II, and the Vespera Pro (announced as coming soon back in January, and still labelled as coming soon).

The Vespera II is less than half the price of the Stellina, and sports an enhanced field rotator and a larger sensor (8MP vs 6MP). Of course, let's remember that the Stellina was an 80mm scope and the Vespera is a 50mm scope. Does that make any difference for doing EAA?

After another hour on the phone with Adorama, I purchased the Vespera II. They did not have the Solar filter in stock, but Highpoint Scientific did, so I purchased the Solar filter there. All of this is inbound to me now. I am very disappointed that my Stellina seems to have only lasted 2 years before requiring major repair. I am also very disappointed to be spending another large amount (but considerably less than $4000) to keep on doing EAA while I figure out what to do with the Stellina. Maybe, once I find out what the repair costs will be (under warranty or not) I can find someone that wants it at a great discount price? Probably not. BAH!

Thanks for listening. I'll post more as the Vespera arrives and I give it a go.

smp

[Graeme1858]

A week after the warranty expires!!! Makes you wonder?

Good luck with the Vespera II.

Graeme

[smp]

Yeah, it sure does.
Since I have not yet spoken with Customer Service at Vaonis, I am hoping for the best.
We'll see what happens, and I'll post back here, for sure.

smp

[smp]

Who here has experience with both Stellina and Vespera?
After 2 years of EAA observing with Stellina (no post processing), will I be happy with my new Vespera II?

All comments, both positive and negative, welcome!

smp

[Bigzmey]

That's unfortunate. One would expect $4,000 piece to last longer than 2 years, but then it seems that post COVID goods have general issue with longevity. I hope they have a good customer service.

[AstroBee]

Sorry to hear about your failure. And right after the warranty expired really makes it hurt.
Did you consider the SeeStar50? It is considerably cheaper and also 50mm. I've heard great things about it.

[OzEclipse]

Hi Stephen,

So sorry to hear about your woes.

First, warranty. In Australia, we have statutory rights where, if a product has a 2 year warranty and it fails a few days after, there is an expectation that the manufacturer will honour the warranty. You should check your federal and state legislation in this regard.

Second. These scopes have short focal length objectives but also very small sensor cameras. As such, they do a great job at stacking images of galaxies. Unless you want to photograph just one small part of the corona, I imaging they are not a great instrument for a solar eclipse. For visual and photography, I and many other "repeat offender" eclipse chasers use refractors with focal lengths of 400-500mm and a full frame camera. The photographic corona is quite large and needs a generous corrected field. The closeup images below were taken with an ED80 @ f6 (480mm) with full frame camera, and the wide field corona and starburst diamond rings a 135mm f2 and an APSc camera.

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135mm 6 x 6 deg.

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ED80 2.4 x 3.6 degrees.

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ED80 2.4 x 3.6 degrees.

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135mm 6 x 6 deg.

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135mm 6 deg short axis

[smp]

I finally have been on the phone to Vaonis in France.

It appears that my Stellina, while broken, is not as broken as it initially seemed. I have done some operational testing to answer their questions, and I'm in better shape than I originally thought.

I took the Stellina out as requested, and I tried to do an initialization in daylight. There are no unusual sounds coming from the arm movement. At the start of movement in azimuth, I hear a brief gear grinding sound. After that, once in a while when an azimuth movement starts, I hear the grinding sound.

I tried the initialization two times, with the same result.

Next, I again tried to perform solar observing. The Stellina performed all its initialization for solar observing perfectly, and then proceeded to capture images and track the sun as normal.

I have tried a different battery and a different cable with these same results.

It appears to me that the gear grinding occurs when the Stellina is starting to make a move in azimuth. Not always, but at the beginning of initialization, and from time to time when making an azimuth change. While it is tracking the sun right now, I am not hearing any unusual sounds.

Clearly, the situation is not “normal”. I had great difficulty on two days attempting to perform solar observing, and during nighttime observing, a lot of gear grinding sounds while attempting to track a target. Those gear grinding sounds are now reduced, but still present.

I am now waiting for another response from Vaonis.

smp

[Lady Fraktor]

Hopefully a good outcome for you.

[OzEclipse]

Hi Stephen
I am glad to hear the situation isn't so bad and good that they are giving you support.
Joe

[messier 111]

I hope everything works out in your favor.

[smp]

Hello again all,

I sent my Stellina back to France.
They gave me a one-time out-of-warranty service for free, and they paid shipping both ways.

As the Total Solar Eclipse was approaching, and our trip to Vermont was planned and paid for, I promptly purchased a Vespera II. It worked well for me as my first time imaging the progress of the eclipse. However, I did not get the totality. Either the thin cloud cover was enough to ruin the shot, or I flubbed it up somehow. I opted to visually take it in rather than fiddle with the scope. Visually, it was excellent, even with the thin cloud cover. Too bad, I didn’t get an image.

My Stellina has now returned from France, with the blessing from Agnes that there was an issue, they've fixed it, and I am good to go.

Now I'm in a bit of a quandary, and I'd like your thoughts.

I have posted the Stellina for sale with my local club for $1000. I think that's a fair price, since you cannot buy them any more, and you can buy the Vespera II for $1600.

I've tried out the Vespera II, and the 8+ megapixels in the Vespera II gives me a larger picture than the 6+ megapixels in the Stellina, but the image in the center is smaller than with the Stellina. The additional pixels seem to be in the area surrounding the object of the image.

I know a little about optics, and I believe that the 80mm aperture of the Stellina should allow for a bit more optical resolution than the 50mm aperture of the Vespera II - however, that may really only count for visual observing, rather than imaging, right? The resolution is in the sensor when imaging, right?

The Stellina is quite a bit heavier than the Vespera II - 24 pounds vs. 11 (or 12) pounds.

So, is there a reason that I should keep my Stellina, other than a ready backup? Am I worrying about nothing here, and simply go with my new Vespera II for the longer run?

All thoughts, comments, and advice are welcome.

smp

[jrkirkham]

I can't answer that, but thank you for posting this thread. EAA is new and the more learn about smart scopes the better decisions we will be able to make. There have been a lot of reviews on traditional scopes and mounts, but this is a new arena.

[Bigzmey]

Great that the company stand behind the product. As for Stellina vs Vespera II I would just keep shooting with both and comparing results until the answer crystalizes. This is what I do in similar situation with scope vs scope or EP vs EP.