Smart Telescopes: today's news, September 2, 2026
2026 is shaping up to be the busiest year ever for the smart telescope market, and the picture is changing week by week. Between a mysterious 90mm giant, a brand-new Seestar that just started shipping, and a long-awaited update for Unistellar owners, here's a snapshot of where things stand today, September 2, 2026.
🐉 DWARFLAB Draco: the telescope nobody has seen yet (but everyone wants)
DWARFLAB, the company behind the hugely popular DWARF 3, has the community buzzing over the teaser for Draco: a new smart telescope with a confirmed 90mm aperture — nearly 7 times the optical area of the DWARF 3.
Everything else is still rumor territory, but the clues (a Chinese patent, data leaked from the DWARFLAB Atlas app) point to a focal length around 340mm, a Sony IMX585-class sensor, exposures up to 300 seconds versus the current 60, built-in guiding, and even a rotating sensor. If even half of this holds up, Draco wouldn't just be a bigger DWARF 3 — it would be a category of its own, built for hunting down galaxies and planetary nebulae rather than framing wide fields. Community-estimated price: somewhere between $1,500 and $2,000. No official launch date yet.
👉 Shop the full DwarfLab range at Adriasky
📸 ZWO Seestar S50 Pro: shipping started yesterday
After months of waiting and the retirement of the old S50, ZWO officially announced the Seestar S50 Pro on August 25, with the first units shipping starting September 1. Same 50mm aperture as its predecessor, but everything else is new: a 4-element apochromatic optic with ED glass, a 260mm focal length, a dual 4K camera system (1/1.2" telephoto sensor plus a 63° wide-angle camera for Milky Way and star trail shots), 128GB of internal storage, and a 10,000mAh battery good for around 9 hours.
The launch price is €899 VAT included (down from €999), with the offer running until September 15. If you've been waiting to step up from the old S50, this is the moment.
👉 Shop the full Seestar range at Adriasky
🔓 Unistellar: RAW file downloads unlocked
Good news for existing Unistellar owners too: a firmware update now allows downloading raw image files and connecting the telescope directly to a PC, instead of relying solely on the smartphone app. A long-requested feature from the astrophotography community, who can now bring their captures into post-processing with full control.
👉 Shop the full Unistellar range at Adriasky
The verdict
The message is clear: the smart telescope market isn't just growing, it's specializing. On one side, increasingly accessible and versatile optics for anyone getting started or looking to expand their horizons (Seestar); on the other, software updates that make already-released models more capable (Unistellar); and on the horizon, an aperture like nothing seen before, built for small, faint targets (Draco). For anyone aiming straight for the top, the Celestron Origin Mark II remains the benchmark, with its 6-inch RASA optics. The year ahead is shaping up to be a very interesting one in this space.