Nikon Partners with Astro Tech Firm for New Product

No one is quite sure what they’re up to, but Nikon formalized an arrangement with newish astrophotography technology firm Unistellar to jointly develop… something.

The Unistellar technologies address quite different aspects of astrophotography, so the partnership could involve camera-to-optical-tube-assembly (lens) communication with smartphones; computational photography processing of images to eliminate light pollution or seeing condition problems.

The light pollution issue addressed with the Unistellar post-processing software may be hinted at in the image provided in the release announcing their partnership, as it features a particularly light-polluted landscape scene.

It may, though, be as simple as exploiting Unistellar’s “live light collection” technology to provide the function already found on some MFT cameras, where long-exposures are shown on the screen developing in real-time as light is collected.