paulastro

I'm very happy with the S50. I think to throw £4k at the Celestron now would be a huge gamble. I'll stick with what I've got - certainly until Seestar Mk 11 is unveiled. If Seestar can market the S50 for £500, just think what we might get for eight or even twice the price 🤗.

Thanks for all the info Steve, it's very useful.

I've only had the opportunity for a longest exposure of 43mts so far and it looked fine to me - which I expected. It would be wonderfull if the chap on the Facebook group is correct. I'll keep experimenting when I have the chance to go to a darker site and see what the time limit of acceptabilityy is. I've had my S50 since December but I was unable to drive gain until very recently following an operation - hence the delay. Whatever the outcome, the S50 is an incredible bit of kit, better than I thought it might be when I bought it!

It also includes info re a comet which may be a bright naked eye object in the Autumn. Its well worth watching.

Mike, I'm glad it wasn't me that suggested you use a large dose of imagination in your drawings 😂.

Just watched this - it's particularly good for Pons-Brooks. Well worth watching.

Thanks for posting Jeremy. The 1st edition has always been the first book I pick up for Messier object information. It sounds almost like a new book, I must order it, damn! 😅

Went out earlier to catch Pons-Brooks and grabbed a pic at 8.09pm before it was lost to cloud. https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/416019-comet-12ppons-brooks/#comment-4466303

Went out earlier, and despite me seeing no stars lower than Jupiter and 12P/Pons-Brook in that direction, the Seestar S50 managed to obtain some frames to stack. Despite indicating 13mts of exposure, it was only 5mts 40 seconds. I noticed that cloud had completely enveloped the comet only when I had a message saying that it could no longer enhance the image as there were too few stars visible! I thought the S50 had frozen when in actual fact it was waiting for the stars to come out again, which they didn't! Lucky to get 5mts worth. Looking at the nucleus of the comet it looks quite elongated. It almost looks as if it may even be breaking up or perhaps sending out material in different directions? Perhaps the elongation is the movement of the comet due to the S50 tracking on the stars?

Got up at 3am this morning to take some pics of a few summer objects in the early morning sky with the Seestar S50. It sort of reminded me of summer - except it was -1C and I was frozen!

I had an hour or two clear weather forecast between eight and ten earlier this evening and it turnedout to be correct! I took advantage to take a pic of the Rosette Nebula with the Seestar S50. It was nice to have a comparatively dark sky with no moonlight - the best for some time.

The Seestar is certainly a useful 'scope' to have when conditions may not be worthwhile for visual observations. A bright Moon and some haze, poor seeing, frosty. Cleared at 1am as forecast surprisingly. Though- this was too late for some objects I wanted to observe. Pics of a few I intresting objects below. First NGC2266, a small triangular shaped 6' OC in Gem. It contains many red giants, rather a colourful little cluster. NGC5907, m10.3 edge on galaxy in Draco. The Splinter Galaxy, 12.9'x1.3'. Couldn't resist snapping M13, Hercules Great Globular, and the E Veil NGC6992 as they rose into view. Pleased with the results in the conditions, particularly the E Veil. PS The Splinter Galaxy would have been better, but I left the deep sky filter on after using it on the pic I had taken before. It didn't do it any favours..

Thanks Geoff. Do you use a lens hood? I do and I have had no problems with reflections.

Well, it actually probably doesn't. It just seems like that because you get more used to how good it is the more you use it. It seems hard to find any sky conditions in which it won't surpass my expectations. I've learned that the bright Moon is not an issue. For those who haven't tried it, and probably don't own or use any specialist astronomy/deep sky software, it's worth learning to use your phones' camera software to enhance your images. A little tweak can make a big difference. The pics below were all taken over the last two/three nights, and all have benefited from a little enhancement. I'm no expert so almost anyone should be able to do it! Hint - always save any alterations as a new picture rather than changing the original. All the pics below are full frames, (uncropped) so have the date, time, object name and exposure in minutes imprinted at the bottom.

I bought the StellaLyra version of the Skytee11 about two months ago. Tried both tube clamps and neither of them sprung apart. I was concerned about this myself having used a Skytee Mk1 many years ago. I bought the StellazLyra version as I thought it might have some better componenents specified than the Skytee versions, though I haven't been able to compare them directly. The FLO version was thirty pounds cheaper than the SkyTee11 when I bought it, and came with two counterweights instead of one. I did buy a longer ADM clamp for one side, but this was because the longer clamps are better for balancing heavier scopes - such as my Askar 103 apo triplet which is f7. Having said that, it did seem secure on the two shorter clamps also.

They have an app on Google Play !

Already done it 😊 See new post.

Malcolm. I can't do a link for some reason, it's called SpaceweatherLive which is part of a Belgian group of websites. One of them is about Solar activity and it goes into far more detail about the solar activity than spaceweather.com It too has a live stream of the current WL disc plus lots more. Can I suggest you do a Google search and Im sure it will come up. Let me know if it doesn't. Paul PS Malcolm - just went on Google Play and they have an app !

Er, no, sorry. About to eat, but will try and post a link for you later.

Thanks Malcolm. I remember a huge spot from the early 70s which I drew and had it published in TA if I remember correctly. I'll have to track it down to see how big it was.

Mike there is an obvious use of the Bortle Scale to anyone who doesn't always choose to observe from home. Observers who wish to, can go to a better area for a clearer view of fainter deep sky objects inparticular, and more transient objects like brighter comets, aurora displays and meteor showers etc etc. It's not the case people go elsewhere because they don't try to get the best of their home conditions, but because its sometimes good to travel somewhere the conditions are better to obtain a better view, or an image. For this use the Bortle Scale is very useful. Of course for your main interests of lunar or planetary work this is not so important. However, even your excellent deep sky drawings would show more detail if you did them from skies with a better Bortle rating if you wished to - or even a bigger telescope 😅 Its not a weakness or admiting defeat to sometimes seek darker skies. That's why I've been going to Kelling for about twenty or so years . Unkind people might say I need to with my aging eyes 😊.

Malcolm This is from spaceweather. It shows the number of spots per day and its size each day. It's more than doubled in size in the last five days by the look of it.

Youre welcome Stu. I agree, I had to dodge showers today - lucky I had a cover to hand to throw over the S50 😊.

Info below from spaceweather.com today. The pics below were taken on Sat 24 before midday and today, 26th, at 1.58pm between rain showers. All taken with the Seestar S50, single frames and crops.

Went out last evening to try the Seestar in poor conditions to see what it would come up with. The Moon was 98% illuminated. The pics and exposures are M42 19mts, Horsehead Neb 14mts, and the Flaming Star Neb .7mts. The exposures were all shorter than I intended due to clouds, it was -1 deg C with an icy haze, particularly low down. I did a little processing of all of them with my phones camera software except the Moon which was caught as it went into a cloud bank at the end of my session. It should perform very impressively in a dark sky.