You will also see some more values such as Astigmatism and Coma. Again, these are measured by the interferometer when we take measurements of the optical surface after adjustment. These are values which ideally would be at 0 but as our test optics are all curved lenses, there will always be astigmatism and coma present. The lower the number, the less of these aberations you will effectively see but with most refractors, you can buy field flatteners which will compensate for the coma anyway. The astigmatisms value is explaining the error between the symmetrical curvature of the lens. Basically, no lens will be perfectly symmetrical, the lower the astigmatism, the more symmetrical the lens surface is. The process of setting up the SkyWatcher Star Adventurer 2i can seem daunting, but if you follow these simple steps, I promise you’ll have your Star Adventurer up and running in no time! Fantastic piece of kit and exceptional service Harrison Telescopes expertly guided me when deciding on what I needed to begin my journey into Astrophography. The Skywatcher Star Adventurer is a well built and user friendly piece of kit. It is ergonomically made and very intuitive to use. (11/01/2021) Tristan - Newcastle

Like the original Star Adventurer, it can be setup in two configurations, as shown in the images below, with the camera attached directly with a ball-head or with the 'fine-tuning mounting assembly', which effectively turns the 2i into a small equatorial mount, with movement adjusted in right-ascension and declination. Unless you have a collar mount around the lens allowing rotation, the orientation of the camera will be fixed with this approach.

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Excellent The Skywatcher Star Adventure is an excellent choice for anyone starting out in Astro photography as it is easy to handle because of its portability, rather than getting right in from the beginning with a more heavier mount. (17/01/2021) Robert Anderson - Paisley Scotland

Rotating the control knob, you can select a range of presets, which include the usual ‘Lunar’, ‘Solar’ or ‘Sidereal’ options, but there is now an interesting ‘App’ addition. A fine-tuning mount assembly can be added, which allows for a small telescope to be attached either for visual or guiding use, and it has its own manual slow-motion control for declination. A second ball-and-head adaptor can also be added for dual-imaging purposes along with a counterweight bar and counterweight. PolarscopeThe Skywatcher Star Adventurer provides an excellent route into astrophotography for those using DSLR cameras with wide-field and medium focal length DSLR lenses. Its ease of use and aircraft-friendly size will also appeal to those wanting to travel to dark-sky locations.

The polar alignment scope is permanently built-in to the mount. If using a ball-head, you'll need to align the mount before attaching the camera, likely using the illuminator which attaches separately. If using the 'fine-tuning mounting assembly', it is possible to view through the polar scope and adjust the alignment with all the camera weight on the mount, which I recommend. You can modify the lugs on the illuminator to fit it into the green dovetail. The SAM I reviewed earlier actually shipped with a very simple adapter for this purpose. Once polar-aligned, we programmed a range of timings using the app with the Canon 50D and its 18–55mm lens set at 18mm. The mount body is the workhorse of the Star Adventurer 2i. It contains the integrated polarscope, control selection knob and various ports, yet is quite lightweight and can be used when it’s attached directly to a tripod – with latitude adjustment done via the tripod’s tilt head – or with the supplied equatorial wedge. Equatorial wedge SpeedyIt arrived the day after and it took me seconds to gett the parcel ready for recycling as it wasn't covered in tape. (04/05/2021) brian lee - Devon If I could request one change to the Star Adventurer mounts, it would be to have an effective illuminator built-in to the core of the mount and which can be dimmed to very low levels. If more product and equipment designers tried to do astrophotography in the southern hemisphere this might be less of an issue ;-). The App based alignment is easy for northerners with no need for the illuminator if you align during twilight once you can see Polaris.

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The way round this is to polar align first and then put the adaptor, ball head and camera on afterwards ready for imaging. We also measure the Power with our systems which is essentially the error from the reference sphere to the test optic. The reference sphere we use on our system is a very high quality sphere so the closer to zero the Power, the less error between the 2 elements thus ensuring a higher quality optical surface. For our review we used lenses that ranged from 18mm to 400mm with our Canon 50D and modified 300D DSLRs, and then swapped to our Equinox 80ED refractor with the same DSLRs.