Seestar 50 first light M8

[seeker372011]

First light with a Seestar 50. My wife’s first ever astrophoto.

Literally took off the protective sticker on the lens, plonked it on a table in the backyard- didn’t even charge it so it was with the charge as it came from the factory and selected the first object recommended by the app

Only processing on the live stack was a “de blur “ and “ enhance” - one click each on her Google Pixel 7.

[xelasnave]

Hi Narayan I hope you are well.

That is a wonderful image and from such a convenient unit...I must get one and get rid of all my current gear.

alex

[seeker372011]

:lol:

[John W]

Nice first up image Narayan. Well done.
Cheers,
John W

[tgnielsen]

That’s super impressive. It really will change the world of astrophotography by lowering the barrier to entry so much.

[Andy01]

It took me 6 months of tearing my hair out, watching YouTube, reading this entire site, and googling the heck out of astrophotography to get my first image that didn't look anywhere near as good as that! :) Amazing!

[RugbyRene]

If the Seestar and other smart telescopes get more people interested in the hobby and astronomy in general, then that can only be a good thing.

[rogerg]

Very interesting to see, thanks for posting. Nice result for so little complexity that's for sure!

[chrisp9au]

Agreed! I got my S50 3 weeks ago and I am astounded at what it can do.
Firmware and the Android app being updated/upgraded with new features every week or so.
No more eyepiece squinting through 'cateracted' eyes! :D

EOI on my other gear will definitely be considered!
Gunna sell my metal detector too, stay home and play with this thing!

[floyd_2]

When you consider that it's limited to maximum 10 second exposures to avoid field rotation issues, that's a stellar result. Really impressive. I think that I may have over invested in gear lol. All of you reading this - don't tell my wife :)

One of these would be the perfect companion scope for the rest of my gear to get me to the parts of the sky that I can't easily drag my rig to, to avoid trees / houses etc. When my wife asks what that weird looking telescopey thing on the mini tripod is in the coming months, I'll be blaming you Narayan lol

[Crater101]

After three years, mine still don't look that good! :shrug:



Many thanks for sharing that, I've been wondering how these units would perform and it's good to see some real world results. Nicely done.

[seeker372011]

A new firmware update dropped today. Exposure can now be selected from 10, 20 and 30 seconds. A planetary mode is available though the images I’d think would be too small to be satisfactory. A RSTP protocol has been introduced which I suppose will be useful for screen sharing in outreach situations.

Thanks to Sydney weather my wife hasn’t taken the little scope out for a while so I don’t know how this will work in practice but ZWO keep on adding features…

[floyd_2]

Those longer exposure times would be handy depending upon your latitude and where you're pointing. There are some good resources online that help you to estimate the maximum alt/az exposure possible based on your latitude, object altitude and object azimuth. Armed with that info you could potentially make good use of those extended exposure times for some objects and still avoid field rotation. Take a look at the attached table - I hope it's helpful.

[seeker372011]

A couple of photos taken by my wife with her Seestar50 ( before the new Firmware update) from our clubs dark site at Linden in the Blue Mountains

About 45 minutes for the Horsehead and 30 for the Tarantula


These are the stacked jpgs from the phone with some minor enhancements on her Google Pixel 7 phone.

It is possible that that results would be better if individual subs ( FITS) are stacked in another app like SIRIL or APP and processed. Some people are processing in PixInSight.


Users like my wife can’t be bothered to do such processing. She is happy with results like these out of the Seestar. To each their own.

[AlexN]

These would be amazing for outreach nights hey, or running them from a tablet to get the kids involved!

One of my kids is obsessed with the idea of "Having a go" of my rig, but I'm not quite prepared to let my 8 year old attempt to assemble 50+ kg of mount and gear that's significantly above her head height, let alone hand over the reigns to multiple thousands of dollars worth of gear to a kid who's something of a wrecking ball when she wants to be!

One of these might just scratch the itch for her though!

Really promising results!

[seeker372011]

One of these nights when my grandson is here on a sleepover I might ask my wife’s permission to let him have a go with the Seestar. He’s five.