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Yes, because Seestar is tilted then viewing towards the south becomes restricted as it thinks the horizon is much higher than it really is. I think polaris sinks lower in the sky as you move towards the equator in which case people living in lower latitudes will be more restricted as the seestar has to be tilted more to line up with Polaris. I hope that's right

I am following Cuiv's excellent video https://youtu.be/QlLiK-wcLqk My set up is in the image. You should think about a more robust tripod as the seestar is heavy and might topple the std one. You need a wedge like the skywatcher i have which you adjust to point to polaris. I have taped on a bit of 15mm copper pipe and this works really well. I always use the power bank which would probably power the Seestar with the dew heater all night. So compass calibrate the seestar. Attach it to a reasonably level tripod Sight polaris in the copper tube by manually adjusting the wedge. Then use the app to point the Seestar somewhere overhead at some obvious stars and press the red photo button. Seestar plate solves to work out what it is looking at and then does its 3 point calibration. As soon as that has finished press cancel. That's it. Then use the app as normal to select what you want to observe. Note: It is important to secure the shoe to the base of the seestar reasonably tight so that it does not loosen. This screw connection will be subjected to more torque because of the angle of the seestar. Hope that all makes sense.

Last night I used my Seestar in EQ mode for the first time in my urban garden with a bright moon. Over 84 minutes Seestar saved 69 minutes worth of 20s shots. I removed 9 shots due to satellite tracks before stacking and I am pleased with the result. There was much less rotation as you can see from the uncropped image of M100 and NGC4312. Setting it up was very easy. I wonder if using it in eq mode would enable me to stack images from more than one session? The other advantage of using 20s rather than 10 is that stacking in Siril was much quicker presumably because there are 1/2 as many images to stack and each one must be brighter due to the longer exposure. WRT the discussion about seeing or imaging. For me there is room for both, While seestar is imaging objects which I have no hope of seeing thru my 200mm dob in my garden I can enjoy looking at planets the moon, clusters and the brighter DSOs or just enjoy stargazing. I have tried a more complicated imaging setup but I gave up as I do not have the patience to get them up and running. The UK weather with its short windows of clear skies does not help either. So something that can be taking shots within 10 minutes is perfect for me.

Thank you - have you continued to use the SS in eq mode? - If so have you noted any issues re wear on the gears so far? - Also do you still use 10 sec shots and do you get less drop outs because of trails? I have seen one or two posts about 'tilt' not sure what that is but someone suggested eq could make it worse. Following Cuivs post today I have a wedge and am keen to try this. Sorry for all the questions!

I hope you enjoy. I was interested in Cuiv's stuff too. I gave up trying astrophotog some years ago. I had a reasonable set up but it took so long to set up that by the time i got it working the lens was either dewed up or the clouds had arrived. With my SS-50 I can be imaging within 10 mins of taking it outside. I am quite new to this and rotation is an issue especially with objects close to the zenith (star trails can also be an issue high up too). Certainly an hour is fine and you can go longer if you are prepared for a larger crop. I would jump at the chance to have something as neat as the SS but with an EQ mount. I am sure such a scope will be along in a year or two. This image is of 12PPons-Brooks. It is v low in the sky. I cannot find it/see it with my 200mm reflector but the SS makes it all so easy. 702 stacked 10s shots taken over 2.5 hours from my light polluted garden. Processed in Siril which is a bit tricky because it is moving against the stars .

When i first got mine I panicked when it could not find the seestar but then I realised it wasn't the Seestar but I was using an old tablet that did not have 5g! I am sure that is not your problem but it is worth mentioning.

Lovely clear skies in SW england last evening. Really pleased with my Seestar image of NGC7331. The main galaxy is 40 million light years away. And the tiny ones above it and bottom left are thought to be 350 million light years away. Those poor photons must be exhausted. Amazed to pick them up in my light polluted urban garden. Top marks to ZWO. The Seestar + dew heater was on for over 2 hours and with a power bank attached was still showing 80% charge at the end of the session. Out of interest this image was taken over 102 minutes. What's the longest people have managed before rotation starts to screw things up? I have a feeling the the duration may depend on how high in the sky the object is?

Thank you. You are right a good suggestion - I can detach the top section - leaving a 3/8 thread for the seestar - ideally i should add a rubber washer . The only risk I guess is that the seestar is quite heavy - if you kick over on its small tripod probably no harm done - but if you do the same with it on a larger pod ????? however the wider base should mitigate along with something reflective on the tripod or scope. I see some recommend the CAVIX LP64 for levelling - any thoughts?

I have been using the small tripod but it is too low, easy to knock and vulnerable. I have tried my manfrotto camera tripod but the small adaptor that attaches to the camera or scope and then clicks into the tripod is fiddly and I worry about dropping the seestar. I like the day glo tape idea. The scope being black does not help. Any suggestions about good (reasonably priced) tripods that work well with it appreciated

When I got mine - it was doing something similar - in that it struggled to find anything, I was getting quite frustrated. I realised that the default focus setting was way out and the seestar could not find focus from there. The solution was to manually focus then once in focus take the focus reading and make that the default. Since then it has worked superbly. I do calibrate the compass each session just in case. it only takes a minute. May be completely unrelated to your issue.

I have just started staving individual fits. In my short time with the Seestar I have taken about 20 images of DSOs. Twice the Seestar stack has introduced rogue shots. 1 of the triangulum galaxy where 2 satellite trails were included (I am ok with those they are interesting) and once with the bubble nebula (when the seeing was bad) see my image a few posts above. That made me think how would I feel if I was 30 minutes into a great image when Seestar stacks a rogue. That would be frustrating. So by saving the original fits, if that happens, it will be easy to fix. However, while stacking is a piece of cake in Siril. Due to bad weather I have only been able to stack twice and no my finished product is not better than Seestar's as on both occasions Seestar did not stack any rogues. So the main reason to save then for me is as a precaution (and I am nerdy and enjoy playing with software like siril)

Thank you. I was following this video. https://youtu.be/8iL2bzewBrQ Two things I noted. When he converts the FITS, he selects De-bayer at 1'.47". When I tried that it said my FITS were in the wrong format. I wonder if that was why it said my dark had different channels to my lights? But as you say perhaps not worth worrying about. I also tried out the free GraXpert on an image with a lot of background gradient, following a review by Cuiv. the Lazy Geek, - with very good results

Had a brief spell on the bubble nebula last night - the image was coming on nicely but after 15 mins a couple of bad frames were added so I aborted. This gave me the impetus to collect individual frames and try stacking in Siril. I only managed 8 mins before the clouds came. Siril stacked 8 mins but after I removed the poor frames I ended up stacking 6.5 mins. I think it might be worth doing to avoid losing a session because of a few poor frames but I am new to Siril and I am struggling to improve on Seestars final stack. I can often improve the clarity of the DSO but at the expense of background noise (I am in light polluted sky). I know 6 or 8 minutes isnt long enough especially where I live, although given the short time I had it is amazing what Seestar can do. Are others doing this? Is the master dark any use? I tried to include it in the stack but was told that it had the wrong number of channels. Any suggestions welcome

This is a comment from ZWO back in June "With the 1/2.8″ IMX 462 sensor size and a focal length of 250mm, M31 will not be fully fit in the photo. Panorama mode with mosaic capture is included in our roadmap. Our goal is to implement this exciting feature in future iterations of the app, providing users with the ability to create stunning panoramic images."

It was 4am Sunday morning for me. I am fortunate in having a 'summerhouse/shed' in the garden so at least I can have a seat and take a break from the wind. But I got my Skywatcher 200p dob out once the Seestar was up and running - I recently picked up a 20mm 2 inch ep. and the views of the moon & open clusters such as the Perseus double cluster & Pleiades were absolutely stunning through it - I see what people mean when they say a wide angle 2 inch is like looking through a porthole. I love the Seestar and the results it gives, but it is a very different feeling to what I get viewing something live through a scope. Thank you for the images. Hopefully we will get a software update that will enable us to get wider views of larger objects such as M45 and M31 and enable us the get M81 & 82 easily on one image . I think such an update arrived for the Dwarf so it should be possible? Later on Sunday I spent many hours with Siril and Gimp working with my stacked FIT files of M42 and M82 from the Seestar, but I can't say that I managed to improve on the Seestar's images. It does an amazing job.

Hi it might be worth repeating from my entry on p31 here that my android 9 phone downloaded the app fine but it could not save images of the sun or scenery to the phone as it had not created the seestar folder in DCIM so I gave up with it. don't know if that was because of the old android 9 or the phone, a motorola. I have the app working on my lenovo tab running android 10. Although I read on the net that many tablets which do not take a sim use GPS for their compass rather than a compass sensor. So the app thinks my tablet does not have a compass. This prevents me pointing the tablet at the sky in the sky atlas, but it does not stop me doing anything else so I have taken brief images of M31, M45 and M33 without issues. It is worth noting that the app works much faster and without any issues on my iphone 12. But I use that phone for goto on my 8 dob with PSalign Pro, while the Seestar is doing its thing hands free. The other thing to note with some older phones is they might not have 5G wifi and Seestar defaults to this. That can be overcome by connecting with a 5G compatible phone and changing the wifi settings of the seestar to 2.4g. then an older phone will see it and connect.

+1 here. What normal person would want to spend hours standing around in the dark, perhaps cold staring at distant bits of fuzz in the sky. - and that was just the start after that came the masses of kit, spending lots of money, partners wondering why he or she is more attracted to fuzz than me. 🙂

Thank you powerlord and everyone else who responded. This morning I put the app onto my tablet running android 11 and it works perfectly with images sent automatically to the gallery via DCIM/com.zwo.seestar. Problem solved. Cheers.

Thank you for that suggestion. I have that folder in Internal storage/android/media/com.zwo.seestar. Not in dcim but it is empty 😞

Thank you all for responding - I have checked permissions for the app - the only one not given was the camera - so I have allowed that as well - but still no luck - the images are still there in the app (see screenshot) - I have searched my phone even looking in hidden folders for files including the seestar hidden folder but no images - lots of stuff in the seestar/cache folder - but not in an accessible form, so I wonder if the shots are currently held as data in the cache and not saved to the phone - I'll try taking some more shots tomorrow and see what happens. Another possibility is that Im on android 9 so quite old - could be an issue there. I would use my Iphone but I use that for the brilliant PCAlign pro app with my 8" dob and I hope to keep using use the Dob while the seestar does its thing. BTW This is a very long thread, I'm no expert but would it be worth having a separate area in stargazers for seestar and or dwarf, possibly in the EEVA section? It might make it a lot easier for those of us taking up this new area?

Hi all. Picked up my ss from FLO today - For me there is a bit of a learning curve to getting started. Is this an appropriate forum to ask questions - or is there a better place? The android phone I am using is a bit old and does not have 5g wifi so the first hurdle was having to log on with my iphone to change the settings in the SS to 2.4g after that the android phone connected fine. 1. Testing to look at the sun -ss had the elevation right but was looking in completely the wrong place - at least 90 degrees out horizontally (compass setting and tripod level was good). I read this might be a bug or is it something I am doing wrong? 2. Managed to manually get to the sun and took 4 photos. But where are they and how do i access the jpgs? The /myworks folder in the SS is empty. I can't see them on my android phone anywhere like DCIM. But when the app is connected to the ss I can see the images so they must be somewhere? Apols if this is not the right place.

Thank you John and Spile. So I cleaned up the base - reassembled - but still too stiff for me - To quantify the problem I have tried to measure the force needed to move it using the scales I use for luggage. It takes 1.5kg of force to start the 200p turning - of course that ends up with a jerk. My SW Heritage 150 moves at 0.7kg. So some of the issue may just be me having to adjust to a much heavier scope. But I will try the milk carton washers and report back. OK So following John's advice, I made two milk bottle washers and fitted one above and one below the central teflon washer. Now using my luggage scales the 200p begins to move with just 250 to 300g of force. Thats a massive improvement from the 1500g before and twice as good as my heritage 150. So I will might to do the same mod to that scope as well. EDIT - I finally got to use the scope a couple of nights ago and it was super smooth with no judder. So I strongly recommend the milk bottle washers. Thank you

Thank you Spile. It surprised me too - I struggle to think skywatcher would sell something that's so difficult to nudge smoothly. I didn't put it together as it was used but it looks to be in perfect condition. It has the 3 rectangular teflon pads around the edge and the disc one in the middle. So that seems right -perhaps dust or maybe the silicone spray made things worse so I'll clean it all up and try again before going the lazy susan way.

Hello - I'm new to this thread. I picked up a used skywatcher 200p dob this week - tried it tonight and the two things I really do not like are 1. the finder scope & 2 the rotation bearing in the base (or the lack of one) which makes it so hard to nudge smoothly, I have tried adjusting the central bolt and putting some silicone on the sliders but with no real improvement. Certainly inferior to my skywatcher heritage 150 I guess partly because of the greater weight of the 200. The red dot finder on the heritage works much better for me so I will add one of those. But I like this idea of the lazy susan and will order one - I would love to hear what size is likely to work best on this scope - I thought the largest diameter that will fit on the base will be best but Mandy D I can see the logic of putting it as close to the base of the supports as that is where the weight is? I'd love to see a picture / diagram of a way to add friction to the system that would be great

Thank you Artik that looks interesting. I'll take a look at the manual (https://artyom-beilis.github.io/manual.html) and try it out on an android and an iphone.