I dabbled in astronomy as a kid, but it wasn’t until I retired and my company gave me a superb telescope as a retirement gift that I fully dove into the hobby.

That’s a big Celestron fully outfitted. I loved it, such a beast. But it became a handful for me as I got older, so I found a young mind who was ready to take it on underneath the crystalline skies of Tahoe. In the meantime, I crowdfunded one of the newer computational telescopes as a gift for a son-in-law and my grandsons. It intrigued me, so I decided to try one myself. I settled on the Vaonis Vespera. So how is it? In a word, fantastic. From ease of setup to the wonder of watching deep sky objects seemingly appear out of nowhere, there aren’t many things more fun than stargazing. And there is always something new to see, from near like the moon and planets to far like galaxies and nebulae. The images below are just small JPEGs that I haven’t done anything with yet. The Vespera allows you to capture TIFF files and do all the astro-stacking your heart might desire.

So, why sell it? To move up to something else. Not sure what yet, but the Vaonis is for sale, complete with Gitzo tripod, dew sensor, dual band filter, two bubble levels, charger and two charging cables, and custom backpack. It’s over on eBay here for less than half the price of new.

UPDATE: It’s sold.