Celestron Origin Mark II: specs, experiences and verdict

By Alexander Merz · Published on 30 September 2026

The Celestron Origin Mark II is a smart telescope for a permanent spot in the garden: 152 mm RASA optics at f/2.2, a Sony IMX678 camera and a GoTo fork mount, 18.9 kg in total. It costs $4,299.00€ 5,499 and is the fastest smart telescope you can buy today.

The fastest smart telescope: Celestron Origin Mark II Smart Telescope

152 mm RASA optics at f/2.2, new camera with Sony IMX678, autofocus, dew heater and filter drawer for 1.25″ and 2″ filters. The device for a permanent observing spot – not for a backpack.

Price: € 5,499

View at Astroshop* →

Still unsure which class you need? The smart telescope finder takes you from your budget to the right device, and our free telescope advice answers you personally.

What is the Celestron Origin?

Celestron calls the Origin an “Intelligent Home Observatory” – a home observatory in three parts. That puts it in the garden observatory class rather than among travel devices such as the Seestar or DWARF. You set it up once and your phone does the rest: recognising stars, slewing to the target, focusing, exposing, stacking.

At its heart is a RASA, a Rowe-Ackermann Schmidt Astrograph – a reflecting telescope built purely for photography. Light passes through a corrector plate, hits the primary mirror at the back and is focused forwards, where the camera sits directly at the focal point.

The trick is the short focal length of 335 mm with 152 mm of aperture, which gives a focal ratio of f/2.2. The smaller this number, the faster an optical system collects light on the sensor. Just how radical that is is shown in our article on its big brother, the Celestron RASA 8.

Celestron Origin Mark II: specifications and what’s in the box

All figures come from the Celestron spec sheet and the Astroshop listing (as of 30/09/2026). We update the price automatically every day.

The camera inside the device is not cooled – the two fans cool the optics and electronics, not the sensor. Among the smart telescopes in our comparison, only the DWARF Draco is cooled; uncooled sensors are noisier on warm summer nights.

Mark II vs. Mark I: what’s new?

The difference between the Mark I and Mark II (“Mark 2”) lies solely in the camera. According to Celestron, the optics, mount, tripod, battery and weight are identical. The Mark II has been on sale since the end of 2025.

The improvement is noticeable, but no quantum leap. More pixels, a finer image scale and a modern sensor; one upgrader on Cloudy Nights reports clearly better stars and colours. On Reddit, on the other hand, two Mark I owners call the old camera the weak point – and one finds even the new one only “barely better”.

What you really see with the Origin

How much light a telescope collects from an object depends on the area of its aperture – minus whatever is obstructed in the centre. With the Origin, the 152 mm leaves a net area equal to that of an unobstructed 131 mm aperture.

Per pixel, the Origin gathers about twice as much light as the Seestar S50 Pro – even though each pixel covers only just over a quarter as much sky (1.23″ instead of 2.30″). In other words: more detail and still less noise in the same time.

In practice, a recognisable image appears on your phone after just a few minutes, as Astroshop, Intercon Spacetec and BBC Sky at Night all report. One owner on Cloudy Nights shows galaxies fainter than magnitude 19 in the Coma Cluster after two hours of exposure under dark skies – that’s jargon for “extremely faint” and unusual for a smart telescope.

The downside: the narrow field of view

At 1.32° × 0.75°, the Origin has the smallest field of view in the premium class. The Moon (just over 0.5°) only just fits, while the Andromeda Galaxy (around 3° long) or the North America Nebula only fit as a mosaic.

Celestron only added the mosaic mode later via an update (firmware 1.5 with the current app); owners in the Cloudy Nights thread missed it for a long time. A mosaic spreads your exposure time across several panels – so large nebulae cost correspondingly more nights.

Planets: the honest weakness

The Origin isn’t built for planets. What matters is the image scale: at 1.23″ per pixel, Jupiter at opposition comes out at only around 35 to 40 pixels – almost twice as large as in the Seestar S50 Pro, but smaller than in the DWARF Draco.

A classic telescope with a planetary camera shows Jupiter at 100 to 200 pixels and costs a fraction of the price. The Origin captures the Moon well, planets at best as a side catch. If Saturn’s rings and Jupiter’s belts are your main interest, take a look at the long-focal-length Celestron telescopes.

Weight, setup and transport

The 18.9 kg is split across three parts: 4.8 kg tube, 7.7 kg mount, 6.4 kg tripod. Each part can be carried on its own, but together they weigh almost seven times as much as a Seestar S50 Pro.

The Origin won’t go on a plane, but it will go in a car. For the boot, Celestron offers carrying bags for the tube, mount and tripod. But if you have to fetch it from the cellar every evening, experience shows you’ll soon use it less often.

EQ mode: equatorial wedge and autoguider

In alt-azimuth mode, the field of view rotates during the exposure – that’s physics, not a flaw, and it affects every smart telescope on an alt-az mount. The result is blurred image edges that get cropped during stacking and, with some objects, ring-shaped patterns in the background.

Since the app update of June 2025, the Origin can work equatorially, i.e. tracking like an equatorial mount. For that you need an equatorial wedge that tilts the mount towards the celestial pole; for long exposures you also need the StarSense Autoguider.

Accessories for the Celestron Origin

What you need depends on your goal – none of it is necessary to get started. Prices change; where we mention them, they are recommended retail prices from Baader (Celestron’s distributor in Germany), given relative to the Origin Mark II price.

With a standard filter, bright stars show halos at f/2.2 – glowing rings around the star. It’s the most common topic in both forums; how pronounced they are depends on the filter, and according to one German owner you can’t get rid of them completely even with a nebula filter.

Celestron Origin review roundup: what reviewers and owners report

We haven’t used an Origin ourselves. This assessment is based on four hands-on reviews (BBC Sky at Night on the Mark II, Astroshop, Intercon Spacetec and a Cloudy Nights user review of the Mark I) and on more than 400 forum posts that we read and counted by owner.

Of the 13 Reddit owners, six are thoroughly enthusiastic – easy operation, strong images even from the city. Two consider the old Mark I camera the weak point, one is disappointed by field rotation, one is selling theirs after about five sessions, and three are neutral.

Source bias: the Cloudy Nights thread is an owners’ thread dominated by image posts, with retailers joining in too; Reddit tends to be sceptical of expensive smart telescopes. We found no recurring hardware defects in any source – the problems concern software, Wi-Fi and image processing. No forum figure on this page is a rating in the sense of a review portal.

Origin, Draco, Vespera Pro II or Seestar S50 Pro?

The Origin has no direct rival in the premium class – the other premium devices focus on portability or price. Here are the four candidates buyers in this class choose between.

Links marked with an asterisk are affiliate links. Specifications: manufacturers’ data, checked on 30/09/2026; net aperture and image scale recalculated by us.

The Draco is the only one that comes close to the Origin on faint objects – with just over a third of the light-collecting area, but a cooled sensor and long exposures. The Vespera Pro II is the travel device with the best battery, and the S50 Pro is the entry point where nobody goes wrong.

💡 The honest cheaper alternative: DWARFLAB Draco

The Draco costs $1,399.00€ 1,499, weighs 5.5 kg and is the only one to offer a cooled sensor and single exposures of up to 300 seconds. It collects considerably less light than the Origin, but shows the larger field of view and fits in any car boot.

The catch: it only ships from November, and there are no independent reviews yet. If you don’t want to wait or can’t set up the Origin permanently, take a look at the Draco in detail.

Premium class at just under a third of the weight: DWARFLAB Draco Smart Telescope

90 mm aperture, cooled sensor, built-in guide scope, 5.5 kg. The realistic alternative if the Origin is too heavy or too expensive.

Price: € 1,499

View at Astroshop* →

Who the Origin is worth it for – and who it isn’t

In short: the Origin is worth it if it can stay put. Everything else is a question of budget and patience.

Links marked with an asterisk are affiliate links.

If you want to learn astrophotography as a craft, you can spend the money differently: mount, camera and optics separately, with more flexibility and more work. The Origin is the shortcut – it takes the assembling, setting up and stacking off your hands.

Frequently asked questions about the Celestron Origin

How much does the Celestron Origin Mark II cost?

$4,299.00€ 5,499 at Astroshop (updated automatically every day). Its predecessor, the Mark I, is still listed there for $4,299.00€ 4,599; an equatorial wedge, autoguider and filters may come on top.

What is the difference between the Origin Mark I and Mark II?

Only the camera: Sony IMX678 with 8.3 MP and 2.0 µm pixels instead of the IMX178 with 6.4 MP and 2.4 µm pixels. Optics, mount, battery and weight are the same. Mark I owners can retrofit the new camera as the “Origin 678C”.

How heavy is the Celestron Origin?

18.9 kg: 4.8 kg tube, 7.7 kg mount and 6.4 kg tripod. The three parts can be carried separately, and setup takes about ten minutes.

Can you photograph planets with the Origin?

Only to a limited extent. At 1.23″ per pixel, Jupiter comes out at around 35 to 40 pixels – more than in the Seestar S50 Pro, but far from a classic telescope with a planetary camera. The Moon works well.

Can you look through the Origin?

No. The camera sits where the eyepiece would be on other telescopes. You see the image on a phone, tablet or screen.

Does the Origin have a mosaic mode?

Yes, since firmware 1.5 in combination with the current app. This lets you assemble objects such as the Andromeda Galaxy, which don’t fit into the 1.32° × 0.75° field of view, from several panels.

Do I need the equatorial wedge?

Not to get started. It makes sense if you process raw data yourself and want to get rid of the field rotation and ring patterns of alt-az mode. The right one is the NexStar Evo/SE Wedge, not the heavy-duty version.

How long does the battery last?

Celestron quotes “6+ hours” for the built-in 97.9 Wh battery. In frost the runtime drops considerably – BBC Sky at Night got around three hours. For long winter nights, a 12 V power supply helps.

Origin or DWARF Draco?

The Origin collects more light and has the finer image scale, but weighs more than three times as much. The Draco is cheaper, portable and cooled, but still untested. With a permanent spot in the garden: Origin; otherwise, the Draco is the better bet.

Verdict: a garden observatory at the push of a button

The Celestron Origin Mark II is the most powerful smart telescope you can buy – on small, faint objects it plays in a league of its own. The Mark II fixes the biggest criticism of its predecessor, the camera, without changing the basic concept.

You should only buy it if you have a permanent spot for it. If you need to carry it, go for the Draco or a Vespera; if you’re just starting out, the Seestar S50 Pro. Our smart telescope guide gives you an overview of all devices.

* Affiliate link: if you buy through this link we may earn a small commission from Astroshop or High Point Scientific, at no extra cost to you.