- Homestar Flux (Satin Black) Home Planetarium Star Projector

This star projector is quite the bang for your buck! I recently had an attic fire, forcing me to repaint my living room (and everything else soon) so I went dark this time, painted the whole thing ceiling too Dard Hunter Green, very cool looking. The rest of the rooms are still primed with an unbelievably white PVA primer product. The Sega in the dark living room is like being outdoors in a fantastic star viewing location..super realistic, and the shooting stars are very accurate. When I moved it to my bedroom, still painted the awful white primer, well, it seems too bright, like..couldn’t go to sleep bright, believe it or not! I prefer the look of it in the dark living room. I think ppl don’t realize how important the reflectivity of their ceilings influences the way the projector works. You can place the projector quite low to the ground, I have mine behind my couch, tv wall opposite, and the lens still somehow fills the ceiling. I included a picture from just my phone from the bedroom ceiling, I didn’t alter the exposure or anything. It’s actually way brighter than that in person, you know how hard it is to photo dark things at night on your phone! When I see ppl writing “bad” reviews about this complaining they are not bright enough, I don’t know what they’re expecting, their paint must have a low reflectivity, because on a super white ceiling, I think it’s too bright, but that PVA stuff is so white it hurts your eyes. Its like a spray primer for drywall, awful stuff. I can’t wait to get more discs for it..I think this is an amazing product!

I had to come back and write a review. I saw some negative ones on here which made me want to come write a positive one to encourage people to get this thing. This is the coolest thing I’ve ever purchased off of amazon. I feel like a child again. I laid on the floor of my basement for 40 minutes last night staring at it. It’s mesmerizing and beautiful. The blue light you see is the glow from my moon ball. I got this for my Harry Potter party, but I plan to use it for anytime I need to relax or have a chill environment. It’s definitely pricey and a splurge buy, but I have no regrets.

Was definitely expecting a better quality product for almost $200. It is really a very fragile child’s toy. Nearly impossible to get in focus, and once you do have it dialed in, it won’t stay that way very long. I have 9 foot ceilings, no matter if it is on the floor, or on a side table I can not get the entire field of view in focus. If the center is very crisp, then expect a good 12 inches from the edge in, to be extremely blurry and smudgy looking. However, leave it on a rotation for a few minutes and then entire field of view will be blurry. It does not take long to “unfocus” itself, either. I turned it on to go to sleep to, and after less that 10 minutes it was extremely blurry and I did not even want to look at it. Some of the stars are just large white blobs too, not very appeasing. Looks as though someone dripped wet pet on something, it really takes away from the realness. Also the shooting star feature is poorly designed as well, and is very predictable and always shows up at the exact same spot. It is really the same concept as the old view master toys we all had as a kid. You place a disc in, the light projects through said disc, and you see the image. Except the view master was fairly durable. I would be afraid to drop or bump this projector, it feels very cheap. This project seems to have the same concept, you put a disc, which shines a light through and projects. Overall, it performed way under what I expected. Unfortunately, I’ll be returning it.

Being someone who is fascinated by the stars and grew up watching science fiction alot, I always wanted my own Planetarium and never dreamed one could be mine. I saw this and was heavily skeptical... I am pleasantly in awe of what i now own. This is the BEST home planetarium on the market, the flux is compatable with all other sega Homestar discs. The design is straight out of Star Wars, it is sharp, and matte finish is nice touch. I watched videos comparing the quality of build and the bulbs brightness, the flux is the new gen homestar that outclasses itself. The competitions home planetariums are far inferrior spec wise and with the available products of backwards compatibility, it is only planatarium worth getting. Sega is such an underrated company and has won my heart (with this and their videogame system Genesis Classic that is completely hackable using Project Lunar to add more games, they are on a winning streak a mile wide) Back to the review! The brightness still isnt anything that can show up on a white ceiling during even low lighting, but if you wait until dark it becomes as bright as real stars, if not more and blew my high expectations away. There was alotta fear when I bought in being afraid of negative reviews being right. Reviewers said: The discs were cheap, bad image quality, wont focus etc... This DOES focus on even low ceilings, I use on a textured ceiling and though you have ALOT of focal adjustment to dial it in, once you do, image is very crisp and the rotation is nice and slow giving realistic immersive experience. I believe other reviewers didnt take effort of properly experimenting with focal ring dial. The shooting star is a joke, it looks nice but stays in same location so can spoil the mood so I dont turn it on. That is where my major hit of minus 1 star comes from, clearly false advertising including wording of "random" with it. This criticism is the only accurate thing I've found from negative reviewers. I bought a bunch of discs seperately because system only comes with 2, people may expect the images to have some multi wheels within wheels of rotation and 3d effects, but it is a suspended single photo only, despite that it still manages to provide alot of depth and appears some stars are back further then others when rotating so it isnt disappointing. The included disks though aren't doing the hardware justice and they're identical and black and white (one has stars in North America as seen from naked eye, other has astrology lines drawn over same field and is eyesore) and I highly recommend imvesting in these, as they're so good and amazing in color, I hardly ever even use the others... 1. Jabbah and Associates. Its a colorful nebulae, oranges, greens and blues, looks like a picture from Guardians of the Galaxy in best way possible. 2. Disappearing Continent. A mostly blue and black beauty with translucent stark webbing throughout. Unlike the others this takes up whole field with hardly any regular starfield visable. 3. Immersive Paranal World. A striped celestial formation that is illuminated in a really pretty way. The normal starfield with this dividing it, it's really appealing composition. The box it comes in is flat out amazing, it's great for storing it and looks so presentable I keep my homestar atop it when not in use. The cord is plenty long, the adjustability is above and beyond, you can aim it anywhere, even wall mount it. I put mine in center of room and multi focus on wall and ceiling above my bed with little difficulty. The focusing dial feels a little loose but doesnt automatically fall out of focus in use and offers a extreme amount of zooming in and out to match your ceiling in focus. Loading the discs is a bit intense, the drawer comes out loose, I recomend placing it down on clean surface, acting with intent in good lighting prior to being sleepy and carefully handling discs with these two considerations... A. You dont want to scratch them, they're hd images from NASA suspended in acrylic, i wish it was in glass so I could polish without fear, but for 25 dollars a pop, they make a great value for image quality alone, but they appear like the surface is fragile so handle with care (and put in text side down for best clarity) B. Keep them dust free, because lemme tell you, you see a single damn speck of lint or dust, it shows up starkly as a blacked out spot and rotates with image. When you do clean them, I blow on them first to knock dust off then use a eyeglass cloth gently to do the job. The sleep timers I dont even need but are nice, when i wake up its always automatically off already and has never turned off when I am awake to see. Luckily they come with great cases reminescent of cassette tape cases design (technically more like the Jazz floppies, if you remember those i am impressed!). The included borders are just junk and interfere with coloring as well as they're all light blue so I disrecomend using them, luckily you dont pay for them, so just consider them bonus cases for your real discs should you ever break one. In summation, highly recomended this, I had hopes and expectations with such a pricey investment as a nerd who has Aspergers and needs a routine because I have allota trouble sleeping at night that this would incorporate well into my self soothing and it delivered. I now utilyze every night, I recomend a white noise machine, gentle fan, oil diffuser, gentle mood music (I use Star Trek 1st movie soundtrack on shuffle and low) and a weighted blanket (that is 10% bodyweight) to feel incredible and have amazingly achievable and pleasant sleep. I am including pictures of every angle, and videos of each disc

I have been a lifelong star gazer and this product is the best! I love the realistic sky view, the ease of use, size of machine, and the milky way as it meant to be seen. It is true that the edges do not come into focus but that is as good as a machine like this can get due to today's technology ( I read and researched this fact) . It not a really problem as the center is so beautiful it does not distract much. I have the northern hemi and southern hemi disc. I highly recommend the SH disc as the milky way is fab and living in the northern part of the world, I never get to view it. The disc with the constellations "drawn" on to it is not super helpful for learning or identifying the stars. I highly recommend, instead, an old book I have used for years called The Stars - a new way to see them by H A Rey. It made constellation viewing easier and more fun!

Not impressed for the high dollar price tag. it worked OK but where I needed to put it in my home it was catching on part of the device. The image on the ceiling was spectacular however, in a square room, it doesn’t make sense. Either part of it was down on the wall leaving part of the ceiling white. Might work better in a dome shaped room. The “following star“ isn’t random. It just goes in the same spot every time so it’s not thrilling after seeing it once I expected much better from Sega. I wouldn’t say it’s horrible. It’s just not worth the money in my opinion. My daughter has one that’s in the shape of an astronaut. It’s not a realistic view of the northern hemisphere. However, in my opinion, it’s much more magical.

Likes: -Room doesn’t have to be pitch black to see the stars, but of course the darker the better. Its bright enough on my 8 ft ceiling to act as a nightlight (once my eyes adjust to darkness). - The manual says that, in addition to the 15,30, and 60 min timer, that if you don’t use the timer and instead leave it on, it turns itself off automatically after 3 hours. That is perfect for me, since I lay in bed for awhile before going to sleep, and the 60 min timer is too short. Dislikes: - The stars, while very sharp, don’t hold a candle to the real experience, mainly because there are so few of them to show. I ordered an aftermarket northern hemisphere disk from another company that is 1.2 million stars (the included disk only has 60 thousand stars), so fingers crossed it will be much better. - no optical tilt compensation like used on office and TV projectors. So when you tilt the planetarium at an angle (when placed at corner of room, but pointed at center of ceiling), it will be distorted. Slight angles work okay (like 20 degrees from vertical), which is what I have set up. But you will have to pick which part of the star view you will want to be in focus. But even much more expensive planetariums don’t have that feature. Oh well. The included picture is of the included northern hemisphere. Taken with nightmode on an iphone, and it looks just like I see it in a pitch black room. Note that i have the projector tilted slightly.

So, I want to start off by saying there is a minor issue with the unit I originally received, so I submitted a return today. There's some sort of obstruction inside the lens that's causing a wedge about 1/4 of the size of the entire display to be obstructed. Amazon is only giving me the option of a refund, not an exchange, but as soon as the refund goes through, I fully intend to purchase another unit. What you're paying for here is the resolution and brightness. that is what sets this apart from other units (for those saying there's no difference between this and $15 toy). I also saw someone complain that the stars are all white. If you look at any image online of the milky way galaxy from the northern hemisphere (which is what is on the disk that comes with the set), they do, in fact appear white because most stars within the galactic disk are young, hot (white) stars. So, I'm not sure what the concern was there. I made this purchase because I just finished up an astronomy class and have become quite enamored with astronomy and cosmology, so this was something cool I could look at while I drift off to sleep and think about all the wonderful, interesting things I learned about our galaxy and the universe. Aside from that minor issue, which I don't anticipate any issues rectifying, I was really satisfied with the overall quality of the image and the product as a whole once I got the focus dialed in properly.