MonsterMagnet

I think that's a rather unfair and condescending post. "lack the ability or ambition" I love my full rig and use it whenever I can but that doesn't mean my Seestar doesn't have a place or that I lack ability or ambition. My picture above shows the SS can be used effectively with a small amount of processing ability and that for travel when I can't take my rig it's absolutely perfect. I would have felt huge regret sitting under the dark island skies with nothing to do a bit of imaging with. You take a full rig around 3 large Asian cities and then to a remote island, produce an image and then come back to me about the experience of lugging it around for 12 days for that one or two nights of imaging. Perhaps then you'll start to see some viable use cases. MM

The Seestar accompanied me to Asia as I had a few days on an island. This is a section of the Carina nebula, 1 hours data (20 second exposures) and processed in PI. MM

Following on from this post, the Seestar did make it to the island in the South China sea and I have access to targets that I don't see in London. It's obviously not as good as a full rig, we are all in agreement about that, but I simply couldn't bring that on a mainly city based holiday in Asia. The skies are dark though and I think the Seestar did pretty well. Here is 1 hour of 20 second exposures on a section of the Carina nebula (processed in PI), clearly something I wouldn't get to image with my main rig at home. MM

I think the travel point is overlooked a bit. I am off on holiday tomorrow and for 4 nights of that we are on an island that is going to be Bortle 2. All the other nights we are in cities so there is no way I would consider taking a proper rig but for the off-chance that I get clear skies in such a remote location I am tempted to take the SS. It's so small that if I end up not using it then it's not really a massive deal. I think this is the issue here, the use cases are different to a normal rig but are being compared as if they are the same. MM

I think he's completely missed the point. I don't even understand the value of comparing a S50 to a full imaging rig - it's like comparing a non-league team with a Premier League team - it's silly. I am fully aware that the S50 isn't going to compare brilliantly to a rig which has cost upwards of 5000 GBP (including a lot of second hand stuff) but the use cases are different. I recently took my S50 to Iceland for a long weekend when I didn't want to take my full setup because the weather was looking very unpredictable. In the end I got a nights imaging out of it and a very nice image of the bubble nebula. Another use case is that it's easy for my son to use and he can happily image away whilst I am using my imaging rig. If ZWO can port the mosaic mode from the Asiair then that will really increase the use cases of the S50. MM

So returning to this I tried to follow the advice but the grub screw seems to be loose and on the side (see pictures). I can kind of get it back in the hole but I can't get the focuser knob off. It seems the grub screw on the other side has a stripped head or at least I can't get anything to get purchase on it. At a bit of a loss now. MM

Thanks. I had just figured this out from a video for another scope but good to have the confirmation! MM

Hi All. I've just picked up one of these second hand and I am having some trouble fitting a ZWO EAF to the focuser. Looking at pictures online I need to remove the right hand coarse focuser knob in the picture below, however this knob doesn't have any grub screws in it (both the coarse and fine on the other side do) so I can't seem to see how it comes off. The EAF is supposed to be fitted to that side from what I've seen so I must be missing something obvious. Thanks. MM

Sorry to respond late to this post. I can't seem to find the grub screw which allows the coarse adjustment knob to come off - any advice appreciated. MM

Thanks for all the help on this thread. I have picked up a StellaMira 90mm ED Triplet second hand which I think will be a great scope for me going forward. MM

So I was taking the camera off the EFW to reattach the tilt plate to send it back and I could see the pattern on the sensor itself (not the glass window). I was intrigued and the seller was willing to honour the return either way so I opened the front plate and it was clearly a film on the sensor. I used a specialist cloth to remove the film and a blower and the flats are much better now. I think I need to do that again more carefully but given there is still a tiny bit on the right but looking at the flats and what I saw posters in this thread were correct that it was a film on the sensor. Cheers for all the help. MM

I bought it second hand, the seller is happy to have it returned and refunded so I don't have any issues with him and that will probably be the route to go down now and purchase a new on from FLO. MM

Thanks for all that information, I'll take a look at that kit and try and get my head around the diagram and cleaning process - I was going to take it off the EFW today and have a look. It's a bit of a pain how the EFW has to be opened up as the camera is bolted to it. The images should be full APS-C converted to JPEG so not sure what is going on there - I'll need to check the Asiair settings. MM

Hi. I think that may be the case, it was mentioned that he might do that. I'll look into how to clean the camera. I took a flat with no cooling and see the same issue so you are probably right. Thanks. MM

Hi. I did cool the camera to take the indoor flats this morning - I'll take some with no cooling later on this evening. The camera is second hand although the previous owner is very good to the point of saying he will take it back if it's an actual issue - he has given me a number of suggestions to try (such as cooling the camera slowly). I'll take the flats with no cooling and post again in here. Thanks. MM