HomeStar - 21st Century Home Planetarium

Featured on Slashdot on June 12th, 2006, under Toys, Space, and Science.

Introduction

Pat once told me that he har­bours an inex­plic­a­ble com­pul­sion to be in space. His belief is that when he’s final­ly there, he’ll have all the answers. Life. God. 42. The meta­phys­i­cal impli­ca­tions don’t make sense, yet this is what he tru­ly thinks. It’s a strange hole in the log­i­cal being I know as Pat, and only the enig­mat­ic curios­i­ty of the night sky can do this to some­one.

I’m no excep­tion. Something borne in us from child­hood is a fas­ci­na­tion that stems from the unknown. The stars pro­vide enough for us to won­der about for a life­time.

Unfortunately, for those who live in the city, there’s lit­tle chance to see the sky with­out “sky glow”, the annoy­ing phe­nom­e­non that drowns out a large num­ber of stars vis­i­ble to the naked eye and tele­scope alike. As a by-prod­uct of indus­tri­al­iza­tion, light pol­lu­tion has tak­en the sparkle out of the stars, and this is where the HomeStar comes in.

What Is A HomeStar?

Thumbnail: Hoodie view

According to the offi­cial Homestar web­site, (trans­lat­ed through Babelfish):
“It is the plan­e­tar­i­um for world­wide first opti­cal type home. It is pos­si­ble to exceed sev­er­al thou­sand num­bers of stars that to project approx­i­mate­ly ten thou­sand thing stars it can see gen­er­al­ly with naked eye of the human.”

According to me, the Sega Toys HomeStar is a home plan­e­tar­i­um. It turns any room into an astro­nom­i­cal the­atre, by pro­ject­ing up to 10,000 stars onto a wall or ceil­ing.

Alternatives to the HomeStar until now have been rather crude. About.com has a list of Top Toy Planetariums, and most of them aren’t above $40 USD, giv­ing kids a few fuzzy points of light on a near­by wall. There’s also the StarDome, which offers a bet­ter image, at the cost of a much more sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment. This includes a week of con­struc­tion, elec­tri­cal work, as well as a steep­er price.

The HomeStar is mid-ranged geek toy. It’s pro­vides an extreme­ly detailed star field, while remain­ing portable and afford­able ($239.00 USD as of June 2006).

Specifications:

  • Weight: 1 kg
  • External size: W16.7 x H15.9 x D15.1 cm
  • Power source rat­ing: Input — AC100V, 50/60Hz / Output — DC5V, 1.2A
  • Electric pow­er con­sump­tion: 3w
  • Electric bat­tery life: 6 hours
  • Power source: Private AC adapter / pri­vate elec­tric bat­tery box

The HomeStar also comes with three fea­tures. There’s a ran­dom shoot­ing star gen­er­a­tor, which projects an ephemer­al comet that flies through the stars. A sleep timer allows the unit to turn off auto­mat­i­cal­ly after a set amount of time. The pro­jec­tion can also rotate, to sim­u­late the rota­tion of the earth.

Package Contents

Thumbnail: Box front

Thumbnail: Box back

Thumbnail: Package contents

I ordered my Homestar from Audiocubes, a sort of mid­dle-man to Japan. The order was placed on a Thursday, shipped on Sunday, and arrived on Tuesday. Not bad.

The Homestar comes in a styl­ish box, with pic­tures of the night sky on the side.

In the box

  • HomeStar
  • Two north­ern sky discs (with and with­out con­stel­la­tions)
  • AC Adapter
  • Explanation Handbook
  • Explanation CD
  • Battery Box

Thumbnail: Homestar instructions

Unfortunately, all doc­u­men­ta­tion, as well as the expla­na­tion CD, are in Japanese. As sim­ple as it is to use the HomeStar, there are some rather intim­i­dat­ing images in the man­u­al that make me feel like there’s some­thing I should know.

One can also pur­chase two south­ern sky discs, but at an extra $80 USD, I did­n’t think it was worth the price. I don’t think they can be shipped sep­a­rate­ly, so the deci­sion should be made before order­ing.

Design And Construction

Thumbnail: Starball front

Thumbnail: Starball back

The HomeStar usu­al­ly comes in two colours, sil­ver and black, although lim­it­ed edi­tions have spe­cial gra­di­ent and pas­tel colours. It comes in a mat­te fin­ish, while the well-designed sil­ver base adds a nice con­trast. Soothing curves give it a mod­ern look. It’s styl­ish enough that it can be stored almost any­where out in the open with­out look­ing out-of-place. I chose the black so that it would­n’t stand out in the room, although this also means that it’s hard­er to see in the dark, mak­ing it poten­tial­ly eas­i­er to break.

The unit is much lighter than expect­ed, but not to the point where it feels flim­sy. I imag­ine that inside is sim­ply a lens used to focus the stars, a motor to rotate the discs, and a light source.
Shaking the sphere does­n’t cause any rat­tling.

Buttons are sol­id, with good tac­tile feed­back. The focus ring is much too loose for my pref­er­ence, although this may be good because it can take quite a lot of turn­ing to get the stars to the right sharp­ness. I also have a dif­fi­cult time remem­ber­ing which direc­tion to turn the know for clos­er or fur­ther focus, as there’s no visu­al mark­ings on the unit itself. I bet there are Kanji char­ac­ters for clock­wise and counter-clock­wise some­where in the man­u­al.

Thumbnail: North hemisphere disc

Thumbnail: North constellations disc

Thumbnail: Disc close-up

The image discs are much more sol­id than they look in the pic­tures. They’re about 3mm thick, made of stur­dy plas­tic that does­n’t bend. The thing to be most care­ful of is get­ting the sur­face of the disc scratched. Although this would­n’t actu­al­ly ruin the thin black lay­er of stars sand­whiched between the plas­tic, may it may still alter the image.

Using The HomeStar

Thumbnail: Ceiling projection

Thumbnail: Starball back open

Stucco ceil­ings are not a prob­lem; the starfield shows up crisp and clear on mine. The HomeStar should be placed in the mid­dle of the room. If it’s too much to one side, the depth of field is too nar­row to con­tain both sides of the field, result­ing in a stretch. Unfortunately, this isn’t always easy or con­ve­nient. The effect can be seen in the pic­ture on the left. However, it does come with a bat­tery box that allows for more porta­bil­i­ty. This is sup­posed to last up to six hours, but the AC cable is long enough that I haven’t had to use this yet.

The pro­ject­ed image does­n’t include the entire sky, just a por­tion of the disc. This makes the rota­tion fea­ture much more valu­able, as it cycles through the sky once every six min­utes. It’s a very sub­tle effect. Often, I’ll have to ask a sec­ond opin­ion whether the stars are actu­al­ly mov­ing. The image can be slight­ly dizzing; I’m remind­ed of the morn­ing of a hang­over, when the entire room seems to spin.

Thumbnail: Colour coded lights

There’s very lit­tle light leak­age from the HomeStar, and this is a very impor­tant fea­ture. The mode LEDs are rather dim, and the pro­jec­tion lens is recessed inside the unit enough that you can’t eas­i­ly blind­ed if you hap­pen to walk by the unit. Any stray light will wash out the stars; light pol­lu­tion exists inside the house now, with super­bright LEDs on many elec­tron­ic units. I find myself cov­er­ing up the LEDs from my blue­tooth charg­er and speak­er pan­el when using it.

The shoot­ing star gen­er­a­tor is a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing. The small comet comes at a set inter­val, and at the same loca­tion every time. Not quite the mys­ti­cal, ran­dom effect that I was hop­ing for.

For those with glass­es, the use of the HomeStar becomes a lit­tle more lim­it­ed. After tak­ing your glass­es off to go to bed, the star­ry ceil­ing becomes some­what of a blur, depend­ing on the strength of your pre­scrip­tion. There’s still a sparkle in the eyes, but it’s not the same effect of sleep­ing under the stars that you pay for.

Conclusion

The HomeStar very effec­tive­ly sim­u­lates a clear, star­ry night. With a dark­ened room, the effect becomes quite roman­tic. It can’t match the actu­al night sky while camp­ing or out in cot­tage coun­try, but for peo­ple who live in dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas, it does the job well. Makes a great gift, espe­cial­ly for peo­ple who have every­thing, and kids with space-themed rooms. Astronomy (and even­tu­al­ly astropho­tog­ra­phy) is some­thing I hope to afford some day, but until then, the HomeStar will give me the enough of the heav­ens that I need. A high­ly rec­om­mend­ed item, if price isn’t a prob­lem.

38 comments
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  1. This prod­uct is rub­bish, 1/10, don’t waste your mon­ey. It isn’t worth £20, buy a tele­scope and just look at the moon bet­ter. I bought it, you can get eng­lish manuel but it’s basic, beca­sue the prod­uct is. Your pay­ing just for design which isn’t worth £20 also. The prod­uct is so bad, i’m ready to use it as a foot­ball. I think maybe in future, and if one spends 1000’s and get a prop­er one used for the big boys and there studys, don’t waste your time here, no mat­ter how cheap. Drop me email if u want to know more… davidcaldecott@gmail.com. xxx

  2. @David Caldecott — First of all, this plan­e­tar­i­um does­n’t sim­u­late the moon, so buy­ing a tele­scope and look­ing at the moon isn’t an appro­pri­ate com­par­i­son. Secondly, your incor­rect use of a pos­ses­sive apos­tro­phe for “1000’s”, “your” instead of “you’re”, and “there” instead of “their” (all beyond sim­ple typos) makes you out to be an une­d­u­cat­ed per­son. And most peo­ple are hes­i­tant to lis­ten to, let alone believe, une­d­u­cat­ed peo­ple.

    It’d be eas­i­er to take your “review” seri­ous­ly if you pre­sent­ed some points to sup­port it. But you don’t actu­al­ly men­tion any spe­cif­ic flaws with the prod­uct; only the fact that the plan­e­tar­i­um is bad and not worth any mon­ey. I’m open for dis­cus­sion here so that poten­tial buy­ers will know what they’re get­ting, includ­ing any pos­si­ble flaws, but you offer noth­ing to the dis­cus­sion.

    As such, I think most peo­ple will assume that you’re unrea­son­ably unhap­py with the HomeStar, per­haps because you were slight­ed by some ser­vice you received, or that you’re a high-main­te­nance cus­tomer who finds fault with every­thing, and com­plete­ly dis­re­gard what you’ve said.

    • Hi Jeff, just won­der­ing if you can help me to iden­ti­fy the use of a brack­et that came with the earth data disc. It is designed to fit on the under­side of the disc hold­er tray for the sega home­s­tar pro, is it just for the earth disc or for use with all data discs?

      regards Peter

      • Sorry Peter, I can’t help you there as I don’t believe I received this brack­et with my plan­e­tar­i­um.

  3. Does any­one have a Homestar Extra? This mod­el hit the mar­ket in Japan in late December, and sup­pos­ed­ly projects 120K stars. Of course, the price is con­sid­er­able…

    If you have one, PLEASE post your expe­ri­ences with it!

  4. I bought a Homestar Extra the end of December and there is no com­par­i­son to the Homestar pro, which I also have. The Extra is supe­ri­or and a joy to use. The stars are almost too bright. The shoot­ing star on the Extra is com­plete­ly ran­dom and very real­is­tic. The stars have 12 light lev­els. The Extra comes with a remote con­trol. I have tak­en both units apart and the engi­neer­ing of the Extra is supe­ri­or to the pro. The optics of the Extra are also much more advanced and the stars at the edges are great­ly improved over the Pro ver­sion. The only draw­back is the high­er mag­ni­tude stars are large than they should be to increase the appar­ent light, but this is the same with oth­er ver­sion. I am cur­rent­ly work­ing a replace­ment star disc that will have grey scales lev­els that should elim­i­nate this prob­lem.

    • Hi Chris.I was real­ly inter­est­ed in your report on the Homestar Extra.I am think­ing of get­ting one and con­struct­ing a mini plan­e­tar­i­um of sorts.Could you tell me,does the star disc con­tain the entire Northern hemi­sphere of the sky? i.e. if you sat and watched,would it show the rise and set­ting of all the stars/constellations through­out the night vis­i­ble from your location,depending on the time of year etc? obviously,minus the Moon,Sun and planets.Is the remote used sim­ply to turn the unit on and off,or can you pre­set times or dates to project the sky?

    • Ugh, don’t tell me that! *Looks sad­ly at bank account.* I can bare­ly jus­ti­fy the pro!

      Ah well. I fig­ure I’ll get the pro, and hope­ful­ly by the time it breaks (I would guess a cou­ple of years, based on your eval­u­a­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy and oth­er reviews I’ve seen) hope­ful­ly I will be mag­i­cal­ly wealthy… Or maybe the extra will be cheap­er then!

  5. I bought a Homestar Extra this past March. Overall I’m very hap­py with it. I am con­tin­u­al­ly amazed at the clar­i­ty and detail pro­duced by the pro­jec­tor. If I squint my eyes I can see oth­er stars. I have yet to use the remote con­trol and real­ly main­ly use only the 1 black and white disc (with­out the con­stel­la­tions). I live close to down­town, so this is my faux night­time sky. I typ­i­cal­ly set the timer on thir­ty min­utes each night and fall asleep to the stars. I plan on get­ting the 3 disc set that was recent­ly announced.

  6. @David Caldecott — First of all, this plan­e­tar­i­um doesn’t sim­u­late the moon, so buy­ing a tele­scope and look­ing at the moon isn’t an appro­pri­ate com­par­i­son. Secondly, your incor­rect use of a pos­ses­sive apos­tro­phe for “1000’s”, “your” instead of “you’re”, and “there” instead of “their” (all beyond sim­ple typos) makes you out to be an une­d­u­cat­ed per­son. And most peo­ple are hes­i­tant to lis­ten to, let alone believe, une­d­u­cat­ed peo­ple.

    Too true, Jeff. If only there were few­er of these idiots post­ing bad­ly-writ­ten “reviews” on the inter­net. Fortunately your writ­ing is always gram­mat­i­cal­ly per­fect and that’s one of the rea­sons I enjoy read­ing it so much.

  7. Where can I down­load the instruc­tions of the home­s­tar extra 21st cen­tu­ry plan­e­tar­i­um? I just pur­chased one for my son’s birth­day but it came with Japanese instruc­tions and remote. Please help.

  8. Hello,

    I bought home­s­tar pro 2nd edi­tion along with some disks and looks so cool; I would like to know

    if any­one has 3D home­s­tar plan­e­tar­i­um disk ver­sion (with glass­es for 3d view­ing), and how to

    obtain it; I can­not find sega toys’ e‑mail address.

    Please help

    Thank you

  9. Hi there,

    I just got my Sega Homestar Extra. I was so very excit­ed about this prod­uct right from the out­set. I pur­chased it via eBay for almost $550 bucks. This ven­dor from Japan also sent me a xerox copy of the work­ing man­u­al in English. As soon as I set it up and have it turned on, my heart just sank. This unit is almost like a slide pro­jec­tor and noth­ing more. The stars sizes are so large, it’s not even a good rep­re­sen­ta­tion of what the actu­al star-watch­ing is like. I could’ve just buy a slide pro­jec­tor and buy a cou­ple of star or galaxy slides and make my own. I am real­ly bugged about the size of the stars, as they are sim­ple just huge, on the wall and the col­or disk looks fad­ed when pro­ject­ed. The rotat­ing disk just spins the star round and round in a cir­cle. I wish it would’ve sim­u­lat­ed the star move­ment, but it did­n’t, it just spin in cir­cle. Anyhow, I wish Sega uses the laser tech­nol­o­gy to make this prod­uct instead of using cheesy slides, because that’s what the effect turned out to be.……

    In con­clu­sion, I rec­om­mend peo­ple to skip this prod­uct because there is noth­ing that this prod­uct does that real­ly mim­ic the real star look at all.…

    Good luck!

  10. Hi jeff just read your response to david calde­cotts review and was tak­en back by how much of a com­plete tool bag you are peo­ple dont choose to be poor­ly edu­cat­ed i went to one of the worst schools in bed­ford­shire that doe’s­nt make peo­ple less hes­tiant to lis­tern to me i had no prob­lem read­ing davids review and found it help­ful. mrrr!

  11. I have just pur­chased the 2nd edi­tion, what a fan­tas­tic plan­e­tar­i­um well worth the mon­ey. I espe­cial­ly like the new north­ern hemi­sphere data disc with around 60k stars it has the real wow fac­tor and it is hours of enter­tain­ment iden­ti­fy­ing the var­i­ous con­stel­la­tions and learn­ing the facts and triv­ia about them, you don’t even have to wait for a clear dark night or even for it to be night. Just black­out your room and away you go. I pur­chased addi­tion­al data discs (although not easy as Sega have stopped pro­duc­ing them) of the south­ern hemi­sphere (stars and stars with con­stel­la­tions) earth and the moon. They are all very clear and detailed. My next project is to build a dome to view the plan­e­tar­i­um in as the unit, with its con­vex lens blurs the stars around the edges when pro­ject­ed onto a flat ceil­ing or wall. I man­aged to find plans for one made out of card­board although I plan to make mine out of dou­ble walled cor­ru­gat­ed plas­tic sheets with plas­tic “H” join­ers. This should make it very durable and easy to flat pack for stor­age and trans­port. This should give me a com­plete out of this world view­ing expe­ri­ence, can’t wait.

    Anybody that bags this plan­e­tar­i­um will nev­er be sat­is­fied with life due to their over the top expec­ta­tions. If you are not impressed by the 60k stars pro­ject­ed onto the ceil­ing in the com­fort of your own room, night or day, then how bor­ing are they?

    All in all the Sega Homestar Pro 2nd Edition is well worth the mon­ey. You can pick them up now for as lit­tle as USD$160 includ­ing free postage, my one cost USD$180 which is still great val­ue for mon­ey. My 5 & 6 year olds love this in their room at night. I have gone a bit crazy with buy­ing “space” prod­ucts since my son has devel­oped a keen inter­est in astron­o­my I have pur­chased this as well as the Uncle Milton’s solar sys­tem and moon in my room. I fig­ure it is much eas­i­er and com­fort­able to learn about our solar sys­tem and the rest of the galaxy from the com­fort of your own home, rather than buy­ing an expen­sive tele­scope, wait­ing for a dark clear night in the mid­dle of nowhere on top of some moun­tain. Which is where David should go and stay!

    • Thank you, that’s the com­ment I was look­ing for ! I’ve been around inter­net seek­ing for peo­ple that bought the Home Star Pro 2nd Edition. I’m going to buy to my boyfriend as a Christmas gift. He loves Astronomy, like me. I hope he’ll love it. From where you bought yours? I’m think­ing to buy mine in http://www.japantrendshop.com/

      Do you know if is a trust­ful site? Do you have anoth­er one to indi­cate me? In this Japan Trend site, with the fee, it’s going to cost 290 Euros, includ­ing fee postage (I live in France). Thank you, and any­one else about infor­ma­tion in where I should buy.

      Merci !

  12. If any­one is inter­est­ed, ebay has a few mod­els for sale — the price is com­pa­ra­ble to oth­er places, but ship­ping is free.

    I can’t promise any­thing about the qual­i­ty, but the one I was look­ing at also promis­es returns for 30 days, and the sell­er has good reviews.

    I’ve spent the last day or so look­ing at TONS of dif­fer­ent plan­e­tar­i­um mod­els, and every­thing I’ve seen sug­gests this is the only one worth buy­ing if you want some­thing pret­ty and edu­ca­tion­al that will stick around for a while.

  13. Zie, not sure if you still have your Homestar Extra. I pur­chased one a cou­ple years ago and recent­ly bought an upgrad­ed star discs from Miller Engineering, 1.2 mil­lion stars. http://www.microstru.com/Stargate.html

  14. Hi, i like in England and i real­ly want to buy a home­s­tar, either pro or maybe the auro­ra? But i cant find any­where to get one apart from on ebay from japan and they say they aren’t respon­si­ble for tax charges to Europe etc. Does any­one know a bet­ter place i could buy one? Thank you!

    Lucy

  15. How would you say the Homestar pro 2nd edi­tion com­pares to the Homestar Earth? They both seem inter­est­ing but I’m curi­ous about how bright­ness com­pares. Also, does the pro2 have ran­dom shoot­ing stars or just a fixed loca­tion? Does the earth have shoot­ing stars as well, and can it use the same discs as the pro2?
    The earth seems pret­ty appeal­ing since it acts as a media pro­jec­tor with the SD slot.

    It’s too bad the Homestar Extra is over $600 or else I’d snag myself one of those.. but the pro2 & earth fit around my bud­get.

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