First Impressions with the Pegasus SmartEye

September 2025  :  Steve Hubbard

So.... I went out on a limb and pre-ordered one of these last March. It arrived at my house in early July. Mine was among the first batch produced, the second is not due till this December and has already gone up in price by about $400. 

I've been evaluating it since then in between lots of crappy weather and humidity.  I live in a Bortle 7 zone next to Worcester with LOTS of light pollution. 

Here are some screen captures from it from the backyard. All taken with my 14" f/4.6 Skywatcher alt-az motorized dob. 

All are 5 or 10 second stacks of about 2 to 3 minutes total each and mirror what you also see through the "eyepiece" part. 

This is sort of a combo eyepiece, computer assisted, straight imaging thing. 

You can look through the top and see the image building from B+W to color in real time. 

You connect this to a phone or tablet via an on board QR code and can control it from either. 

There is also a function to share another QR code with others in the area so that they can also see live whatever you are viewing. 

The downloaded images mirror what you see through the "eyepiece," only the live view with your eye is brighter and more vivid. There is also a 3D effect with brighter stuff that's nice.

The eye relief is only 12 mm, so you have to jam your eye up to it to fully see the field of view and there is some coma. 

It takes a bit of getting used to. However, it is a lot easier to use than connecting up a camera to a computer and all the wires that can go with it. 

It does a good job at letting me see stuff I can barely see where I live because it's so washed out due to light pollution and in full color 

It's got kind of a narrow field of view though, so it's not suitable for large extended objects. It is best on globular clusters, planetary nebulae, galaxies and star clusters. 

Here's a link to the Pegasus page about what this is in case you're interested. https://smarteyepiece.com/