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Sky Tracker
Vixen Polarie Star Tracker
Cost: £356.00 / $399.99
From: Rother Valley Optics / Vixen Optics
If you’re an astrophotographer that gravitates towards a DSLR camera for wide-angle night-sky shots rather than a CMOS or CCD for deep-sky and planetary viewing, the Vixen Polarie is a very rewarding purchase for capturing the dusty trail of the Milky Way and other large-field shots, with no need to worry about Earth’s rotation blurring imagery of the heavens. The Star Tracker can be used in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. We enjoyed the design of the Polarie’s outer casing, which featured the Plough, or Big Dipper, on an extremely well-manufactured case.
The Vixen Polarie is powered by two AA batteries, which allowed it to operate for roughly two hours and provided non-restricted use. Sadly it didn’t come with a cable, which meant that we had to carry a large number of batteries to prevent the tracker from running out of power during a full night of astronomical observation and imaging.