LDW1

4 hours ago, PatrickO said:

 M51 taken with the Seestar from my garden. About 6 hours of 10 second subs. Not ideal conditions as there was a bright three quarter moon.

This is just the unedited jpeg. I'd be very interested in your advice on what editing would make the best of it.

And make sure you do an Auto Focus at the same time.

1 hour ago, PatrickO said:

 M51 taken with the Seestar from my garden. About 6 hours of 10 second subs. Not ideal conditions as there was a bright three quarter moon.

This is just the unedited jpeg. I'd be very interested in your advice on what editing would make the best of it.

What I do on every dso take after about 2-3 minutes when it starts to show detail is I hit the Adjust button on the right side and I use the Contrast and Brightness sliders to get what I like, very rarely the Saturation slider. I might do that several times as it progresses along. I do this every time, every nite.

18 minutes ago, CCD-Freak said:

Isn't that part of IC5070 Pelican Nebula ?   IC1396 Elephant Trunk looks different. 

Not a bad image for only 35 minutes under Bortle 6 skies  (^8

Sorry you are correct, I had a try at the Elephant as well but it was a no go.  I will change that, lol.

I had a go last nite with a portion of the Pelican Nebula for 35 min, Bortle 6 skys  The sky was full of humidity with a half moon shinning bright  I just wanted something to do and practice does make perfect, sometimes.

I tried this one the other nite but it is / was not positioned well for my backyard viewing ie NE at about 50°.  I did it also to make some aware that it is there, it will be a lot more accessable in a month or so.  I overblew it so that prospective viewers could see what it was about. It is part of a larger structure that you can glimpse above it.

I would like to mention, for info purposes only, to new beginers that all the takes I post are minimally processed taking about 15 minutes.  I am not knocking the long, long processing but just trying to say that with minimal you can still get a nice enhancement.

My first enhance of M17 under Bortle 6 backyard skies, they weren't the best.  The Swan in 15 min.

7 hours ago, Geoff Lister said:

I had a couple of sessions imaging C/2023 A3 where the Seestar's orientation calibration message indicated that it had failed its 3-point calibration, due to insufficient stars in its images. It indicated that it would repeat the process with the next target, but then went back to "origin" and started imaging.

The comet was passing through the middle of Virgo, so I stopped the imaging, selected nearby Porrima, and started a dummy image. The Seestar was happy to calibrate its position; I stopped the imaging; and went back to C/2023 A3 and started imaging again, with the comet dead-centre.

It is easy to miss the message that the Seestar has failed its calibration. On balance, I prefer the current situation, where it does its best to image; rather than just sit there and wait until it is happy with its orientation.

Geoff

If the 3 star is not working on any given nite for whatever reason just shut it off / skip it and just use the goto once you have selected your target, still works perfectly, every time unless the skies are just plain bad which can happen. Then its time to shut it down for the night.

9 hours ago, Gfamily said:

If the failures were over last weekend, it's been reported that some devices had unexpected failures recently, possibly because of the intense magnetic storm affecting the GPS, or possibly because the internal compass was mis detecting the direction.

Why the supposed Plate Finding didn't send a correction before imaging, I don't know.

 

CG :  Every nite before I use the SS I first calibrate it, next I level it and then I do a goto and mine performs as designed every night, never fails. Did you do the same by chance, if not I think you have the answer !

A small part of Masrkarian's Chain from several nites ago !

15 hours ago, AstroKeith said:

The Baader solar film is definitely better than the supplied filter ...

There has never been any doubt !  The Thousand Oaks mylar film with its phony orange tinge is the worst ever, SS must have gotten a great deal to use it in their solar filters.

I stayed up til 3:30 am to get this, I couldn't wait for July-Sept to get here, lol. I just did a touch up with my built in ipad editor.

M12 !   Ophiuchus holds several (5) nice star clusters.

1 hour ago, LaurenceT said:

A friend has kindly made me a 3d printed solar filter for the Seestar with a Baader film. I've applied a little AI sharpening and denoise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great take !  With the Baader film on a day when air currents are as still as you can get, especially around 10 am and winds are very lite the edges of the sunspots should be razor sharp not lot like the SS stock solar filter that uses the Thousand Oak mylar film with the phoney orange tinge.   I hope someone starts turning them out, I will buy one in a heart beat no matter what the cost !

12 hours ago, StevieDvd said:

Starting to try using the Seestar in EQ mode,  had issues first time getting it aligned but managed to hit a rough PA before calling it a night.

I did a goto to M13 to check it was aligned and managed a 10 minutes of 10 sec exposures, with a quick process in Pixinsight as below.

It even caught NGC6207 in top right of image. Once I get the hang of setup and PA it properly I can try longer exposures and more of them.

 

A great take !

44 minutes ago, LDW1 said:

Another recent take !

/

 

 

I used the SS's built in stacker for these, I like it and I like to support SS when I can !

Another recent take !

/

On 29/04/2024 at 19:54, CCD-Freak said:

I just don't like the field rotation of an Alt-Az mount so if ZWO would update the firmware / software to support operation in equatorial mode and offer an EQ wedge option I would probably buy one to play with while my regular imaging setup is running. 

 

I would get one anyway, you don't realize the fun you are missing at such a low cost !  You might become addicted like the rest of us, lol !

10 minutes ago, nicoscy said:

Agree 100% - but it's something that one can use temporarily. I do believe ZWO will address this at some point. While I am lazy to do the existing "PA" routine or PA in general with EQ mounts, it's actually not a challenge, so ZWO can't exactly claim that this is an advanced feature

Decades ago I had an EQ mount or two, I didn't like the contortionist actions / attitudes that I had to do, I vowed never again, lol. I am sure the automated SS would have its problems as well, some how and for very little gain, in the end !

2 hours ago, nicoscy said:

Hi Jon,

Apparently you can mount the Seestar on a regular wedge and trick it to "polar align". Many are doing this, but I prefer the simplicity of Alt Az.

They are but it limits your field of view below a certain horizotal position, considerably, it might restrict access to many objects in say Scorpius and Sagittarius, maybe !

2 hours ago, andre2 said:

Okey.....differences seems very normal in solar telescope due to complexity and small deviations in the production.  I thought once that it had to do how bright the scope is or how ALL filters in the system works together. Yea...seeing can effect every telescope in their own ways

With my WL filters / scopes many times I either use a Variable Polarizing filter or a #56-58 green filter, they can really enhance the views.  I tried the variable filter one time in my ha scope but it made the view way too dark.

1 hour ago, andre2 said:

Sometimes I have the feeling that (generally)  some 40 and 50 Lunt's show better prominences then some Lunt 60 , while the SD is generally better in the 60. (It's like that there are some advances and disadvantages beteen all units or bunch to bunch)  And then... better seeings helps too "solve" this, but less common. I am happy with my Lunt, am using up to 60x with zoom. But it's quite clear that the surface detail makes a better impression generally. 

There has always been some slight discrepencies in the etalon, they are not easy to build and get a consistant lens / filter, thats why they are so costly.  The 3 ha scopes that I have owned have all been great performers. And as always air currents, heat rising always affects view quality, hour to hour, sometimes a lot.

The Deep Sky Stack feature built into the SS is a great little utility, its enjoyable just to play around with, this is one from last nite that I stacked with it today. I am not sure if I can do a before / after, I will give it a look but I have a couple of things to do first.

5 hours ago, glafnazur said:

I love your star images 👍 Not many people image individual stars, please keep them coming.

 

And there are a lot of them.

A few more for my Stars Album