In a change from the usual service I am reviewing a product today, a telescope. More exactly the Dwarflab Dwarf 3 smart telescope.
It’s not my first telescope review, I also own a Celestron Nexstar 5SE – a more conventional telescope.
I was interested in a new telescope because we have started home education and my son has an enthusiasm for astronomy. Showing him the ropes on my Celestron was a bit frustrating, the built-in controller uses a tiny two line display and a numeric key pad, and to do imaging requires a rather uninteresting set of random adaptors and connectors some of which need careful alignment. Initially I was looking for something more convenient than my DSLR for imaging but for roughly the same money I could get a whole new smart telescope!
Smart telescopes are a relatively recent innovation. Telescopes have been more and more automated over the years but in the last few years they have broken free from the conventional telescope formats to produce devices like the Dwarf 3 shown in the image above – it has no eyepiece for direct viewing and is entirely controlled by an app.
When buying the Dwarf 3 I looked at entry level smart telescopes below £1000 in price so the main contenders were the Dwarflabs models and ZWO Seestar models. I chose the Dwarf 3 because it was a little more portable than the Seestar models, it explicitly supported wildlife and landscape imaging and it was also a little bit cheaper. Reviews suggested that its software was more flexible. The Dwarf 3 was £459, I bought it from First Light Optics and it was delivered within 24 hours of ordering!
I also bought the Dwarflab Mini Tripod for an additional £73. The tripod is a solid piece of kit with angle scales on the rotational elements in the head, it is best suited to use on a table since it is quite short. It is rather more expensive than entry level tripods but cheaper than premium brands like Manfrotto. I can also use the Velbon tripod I already own – the Dwarf 3 takes a standard camera mount thread.
In the Dwarf 3 package you get the scope, a soft carry case, neutral density filters for observing the sun, a lens wipe, a USB-C to USB-C cable and a very thin manual. The manual tells you how to pair your phone to the scope from which you can use the Dwarflab app to control the scope and that is all. My phone has an NFC reader so I can just “tap to connect”. It seems this connection process has been improved since the Dwarf 3 was first released.
The cylindrical lens housing of the telescope can be twisted, and the whole device be twisted on its base so you can point the telescope without the app but the app is required for everything else including looking through it!
The video tutorials accessible from the Dwarflab app are definitely worth watching, you can find them here.
The Dwarflab app, and the telescope are clearly undergoing rapid software updates. I was prompted to upgrade the firmware of the telescope on my first night-time try so that I could access functionality available in the app. There were two small updates that installed quickly and cleanly. I bought a 2026 third party manual which although very readable and useful is clearly out of date in terms of the details of the software. There is an official manual from Dwarf lab in PDF format here, it is 280 pages long.
The Dwarf 3 has a wide angle and a telephoto camera; you can see a live view from both on the connected phone in “picture in picture” format. It is easy to switch the main view between telephoto and wide angle cameras. The wide angle is equivalent to a 45mm focal length lens on a 35mm film format camera, and the telephoto is equivalent to a 737mm focal length lens and has a focal ratio of f/4.3. For comparison the Celestron Nexstar 5SE has a 1250mm focal length lens with f/10 focal ratio, the 5SE is currently about twice the price of the Dwarf 3.
The wide angle lens makes aligning on the sun and moon ridiculously easy – you just steer towards the appropriate location using the wide angle lens to put your target in the guide box at the centre of the frame and then switch to the telephoto view. I found aligning my conventional Celestron on the sun really hard because the sun nearly fills the field of view, there’s no indication you are getting close and I could not use my guide scope. The results of my first imaging forays with the Dwarf 3 can be seen below, as well as the sun I caught a sliver of moon early one morning.
I also took an image of Jupiter in the early morning, it was easy to see the disk of the planet but I could not see the banding of the clouds or the Galilean moons, this was probably because it was getting light and the sky was brightening.
I took the sun and moon photos in “Solar System” mode, there are also General, Deep Sky, Milky Way, Star Trails, Auto-capture and Pano (Panoramic) modes. Alignment for the Deep Sky and Solar System modes is automatic, you point the telescope at a starry sky and it works out where it is pointing from the stars in frame – you can then pick your target from the star atlas and it will go to them automatically.
This means the challenge in astrophotography with the Dwarf 3 is optimising your imaging parameters and post-processing rather than setting the scope up or finding the target.
Update 12th October – took this image of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) last night, the exposure time is about an hour. The process was to open up the star atlas and click on the photo button next to M31! It was embarrassing simply but exciting to see the image building up.
I took some wildlife pictures in my back garden, these were not ideal since my garden is small, consequently reasonably sized animals more than filled the frame. The telescope cannot move very fast so you need to find focus on a location and wait for wildlife to appear. In theory it will track moving objects but I suspect this will only work for small ones moving slowly close up or larger animals further away. It might be worth a try at my local wetland bird reserve.
This review is written on the basis of only a few days use. I think this is probably the best £500 I have spent for a while, to get a reasonable image of the sun, moon and Jupiter was very easy – the work of a few minutes. The Dwarf 3 is just so much fun to use. There is clearly scope to improve these images with the flexible software provided. The Dwarf 3 is as portable as a DSLR camera, so taking it on a walk or holiday is a simple exercise.
Now all I need are clear skies!
