Cosmic Geoff

You do seem to be having a lot of trouble with your Seestar. Mine performs without fuss. I have not used the autofocus often but it worked okay. When it failed to plate-solve or find an object, it was generally because it was pointing at a building, tree etc. (it is not necessarily obvious where a small black square thing is pointing in the dark 🙂) Dropped frames seemed mostly down to drifting cloud. There is a 3 degree tolerance on levelling, and mostly when I put it down it just works. I have noticed some star trailing, mostly on its first night (caused by backlash?) and ovalled stars, but one can re-start the run or leave it to see if it is sorting itself out.

Here is an image of IC 5068, about 40 mins, from 24 Nov, stacked FITS file processed in SIRIL. This image did not get transferred to my smartphone because I moved out of range of the Seestar wifi more than once, so I had to access the FITS. This is a lesser known nebula, total size about three degrees. It is remarkable that the Seestar can pull this sort of image out of a slightly hazy and moonlit semi-urban sky. The lo-res unprocessed jpg is included for comparison.

Check the price of a Celestron wifi dongle as IIRC they cost even more.

The Celestron 127mm Mak and the Skywatcher 127mm Mak are essentially the same. You won't see so many reviews of the Celestron, as in most packages the Celestron is priced significantly higher so not to many are sold. I have the Celestron 127mm Mak and it is a fine instrument, a 'keeper'. I would not recommend the EQ-2 mount though, except as a stop-gap, as I formerly had an EQ-2 clone and found it wobbly even with a 700x70mm refractor mounted on it.

Since the Seestar makes both the pre-stacked FITS and the separate FITS files available, has anyone made a direct comparison to see if stacking the files oneself confers any advantage? I am aware that one is supposed to supply a dark, maybe a flat, and preview all the images to weed out any duds caused by clouds, satellites or whatever, but it is commented above that the master dark didn't work anyway, and the Seestar lights are typically so dark with their 10 sec exposure that one can't see anything in them, which would make screening 200 or so of them extremely tedious. So far, despite having had the Seestar for two months, I have not mastered the post-processing to the point where I can improve on the instantly delivered Iphone image. ☹️ There's not much point in generating a FITS collection of several hundred MB and moving it around, if the 10Mb stacked FITS is equally useful.

It is said that people buy them expecting to be able to capture fantastic deep-sky images, and then find it is harder than they thought. Or some think new SCTs are over-priced.

There have been discussions here about making up GoTo controllers for the Sky-watcher EQ-5 mount (the Sky-watcher Synscan upgrade kit being rather expensive) and kits are available that might be adaptable for the Meade mount. All sorts of old mounts have been upgraded to GoTo, and there are one or two companies that specialise in this, but expect a $1000+ bill. I don't think so, unless you are a real electronics genius. I have never heard of these handsets working with any other system. The builders of DIY EQ-5 kits settle for having it controlled from a laptop.

If you want to have a rig that clearly outperforms the Seestar, be prepared to spend a lot more money. Like several times more. No. The Seestar battery lasts for several hours. I have found that my iphone needs a recharge before the Serestar does.

It is unlikely to make any visible difference. They still work with slight dew on the corrector plate and that big round thing in the middle. 🙂 The practical effect will be to scatter some light and reduce the contrast. But if it is not yours, you could pass on it and look elsewhere. Lots of these have been sold so there are plenty other SCTs out there. On the other hand, if you sense a bargain, see if the owner will accept a low offer. They usually sell used for far less than the new price anyway.

I only tried the Seestar once on the Moon and it came out looking correctly exposed (as did the Sun). I think others have had the same experience. I have not tried to image any planets with it as that seems a total waste of time with a 2" f5 (not least the question of how you make it find the planet in the first place). If I want to image planets, I have an 8" SCT.

That's an understatement. Despite its impressive performance in other areas, a device less suited to planetary imaging would be hard to find. 😁

The figures don't seem to add up. 60x300 = 18000 frames. (not 40000). 1280x720 x 18000 comes to about 16.6 GB (uncompressed) (not 1.3Gb). As I understand the definition, MOV is a container for mp4 files (a compressed format) which does not seem a good choice if you actually want a RAW file to play with. Perhaps what has happened here is that PIPP has converted the file from a compressed format to an uncompressed or less compressed one, making it bigger.

It seems odd, but some numbers might help someone here put a finger of the problem. What is the size of the images, in pixels? Exposure time for each image? Length of video in seconds? Why is your camera saving the video as a MOV? Isn't that an Apple format?

Have you any idea what a deep-space astrophotography-ready mount for an 8" Newtonian OTA looks like? It will cost you a lot more than 400 euros. It would be better to use the dob for visual and buy something else for imaging - depending on what exactly you want to image the possibilities range from a DSLR on a tracking mount to a large telescope on a very heavy and very expensive GoTo mount.

Dobsonians are not well suited to taking photos of deep sky objects. For that you need a driven (GoTo) mount. The size of the telescope is not material. A fast focal ratio is desirable but the size of the telescope merely affects the image scale. Hence a small telescope, even a 2" aperture one, on a GoTo mount, can take impressive deep-space images of larger objects. If, on the other hand, you actually want to use the telescope visually, Dobsonians are popular in this role.

If you can take the block off without anything dropping inside, do so and attach a dovetail with tube rings. Then you can orient the OTA as you want.

I have the ASI462MC which I bought as a planetary camera. I have used it on deep space objects, mainly planetary nebulae, where it works quite well (there is little or no amp glow), but the field is restricted, and if DSOs are the primary aim a camera with more pixels would suit better. Check the FOV with your intended scope if you intend to image the Sun or Moon with the MM version. As for whether mono or colour is best, the colour version works well and saves all that bother with filter wheels and extra processing. The ASI462MC (unlike the MM) is a non-current model, BTW. I tried out my 102mm f5 achro with a dual band light pollution filter and the ASI462MC as a potential Seestar-beater - see the EEVA Reports thread.

Should you be interested in EAA, note that I put together an EAA rig with a Startravel 102mm f5 achromat, Eq5 Synscan mount, ASI224MC camera, a helical focuser and a recently acquired dual-band light pollution filter. I had most of this to hand, but if bought new it would amount to about £1300, twice the price of a Seestar, but offering twice the image scale. If you want to image, there are various options depending on the size of the objects you want to image, e.g for wide nebulae you would choose a DSLR + camera lens, for smaller ones a telescope, and for very small ones a bigger telescope. A number of popular nebulae more or less fit into the Seestar's FOV. A GoTo mount is a very useful thing to have, but be aware that an equatorial GoTo mount is rather a fag to set up starting from storage, and an alt-azimuth mount is generally much less work, and optional devices can cut the setup work still further. An equatorial is reckoned as being needed for deep-space astro-imaging, but the Seestar demonstrates that this is not necessarily true.

Here are some images taken on 6 Nov through some rather average urban skies. A pleasing image of the Bubble Nebula exceeded my expectations. I captured a small amount of nebulosity in the Pleiades. Smartphone .jpg files reduced to 50%.

I recently bought the ZWO 1.25" dual band filter to add to my EVAA setup, to see if I could match the Seestar S50's performance on nebulae. I figured that with a similar filter, and twice the aperture, it ought to... The filter ought to cut out some of the achro scope's chromatic aberration. Here is the result with 120mm f5 achro, ASI462MC camera, EQ5 Synscan mount and half an hour's worth of live stacked 20 sec exposures. Half an hour makes it more astrophotography than EEVA maybe. This is in fact a better image than the Seestar version and shows some detail of the filaments.

It's worth checking that the motors are not set to minimum speed, which will look like nothing is happening. Set the speed to 9 and see if that fixes it. If that does not work, it may be worth refreshing the firmware, though one would expect an error message if there is a fault. A cable and USB-serial set will be cheaper than a new mount.

If you do the alignment procedure (see the manual) the mount should track any object automatically. You don't need the Starsense (do you mean the hardware Autoalign or the phone app?)

The ingress was clouded out but I saw the exit with my 127mm Mak and with the 102mm f5 GoTo. I did not try setting up for imaging. I missed the moment of emergence as I was walking between the two telescopes.

I have a Canon 300D camera. I have rarely used it for any astrophotography because of various drawbacks - no live view, could not see what I was doing with it in the dark, etc. IIRC I imaged the Moon with it, and after I bought a photographic zoom lens for it I was able to image a few constellations. The support software for the 300D only works on Windows XP (though I was able to get image files off it using Mint Linux). I have not tried any planetary imaging with it as I have planetary cameras more suitable for the purpose. You need to make the camera take a high-speed video and if possible be able to crop the region-of-interest in the camera. The 300D pixels may also be on the large side. As for nebula imaging, you would need a much better mount, e.g. a substantial GoTo mount and maybe other ancillary kit. Can you get the camera to come to focus when mounted on the 114P? (it may not unless the scope has been modified). With the 300D you could try imaging star trails with a fixed tripod, or star fields and maybe large nebulae with a tracker mount (q.v.) If you want to dabble with imaging deep sky objects including nebulae you might think of ordering a Seestar S50, which does it all for you in one package. Having tried it, if you want something that outperforms the Seestar on nebulae, be prepared to spend a thick wad of money.

The third one in your first post apparently has an EQ-3 mount. That's not a bad mount (if it is the same as the Skywatcher one) and alone might be worth the asking price. Omegon is a brand rather than a manufacturer. One of our respected UK retailers sells the same outfit for £318, so search for reviews and draw your own conclusions.