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Ande

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  1. Thanks @Giles_B I’m pretty sure it’s faulty too. After all, the first couple of sessions it performed as it should. Something has definitely gone awry since. Fortunately, I purchased it from FLO, so hopefully they’ll do me proud when I bring it to their attention.
  2. I’m no stranger to the compass calibration dance 😂. And I do level before each session, regardless of whether the Seestar asks for it or not. In fact, I bought a tripod leveller to better do the job. What concerns me more than the preliminaries, is the huge amount of dropped frames. Over an hour’s imaging last night, on the Crescent Nebula, earned me 9 minutes of data. See pic.
  3. I use the focus figures from the previous session as a starting point. However, the Seestar, if asked to then autofocus, will blow the stars up to blurry snowballs, have a half-hearted attempt to focus, and then declare that it can’t see the stars. Then it’s Bhatinov mask time as I manually get the stars sharp again.
  4. Last night’s disastrous session was from a Bortle Class 5.
  5. Is anybody else having issues with their Seestar? I seem to be having a running battle with mine…. Firstly, I usually get it to point at one of the brighter stars, Vega or similar, in order to get a decent focus. It will struggle to locate it and will try to plate solve. Then it will moan about not seeing enough stars. It’ll keep taking pictures, then take the full 30 seconds to try to get it’s bearings. It will invariably fail, and keep repeating the process several times before reporting it’s inability to complete the task. Eventually, I’ll get the star centred, then it will fail to focus, so I have to do it manually with the aid of a Bhatinov mask. Once it’s finally in focus, and pointing where it should be, I’ll choose a target. It’ll eventually find it, and then start imaging. However, it is discarding more frames than it is keeping. Far more…. It can take an hour to give me 5-6 minutes of data. Every 6 or 7 passes it will inform me of star trails, but most of the interim pictures are ignored anyway, so it’s a moot point. And every now and then it’ll moan that it can’t see any stars during imaging. It’s done this when looking at the Pleiades so I’m not at all sympathetic. Especially when I can see it clearly with my 61 year old eyes. Another odd thing it will do is suddenly present me with a picture where it looks like the brightest stars have melted downwards, as if the telescope has been knocked. But all of the lesser stars are still sharp, so it makes no sense. Although, somewhat infuriatingly, it’ll happily add the frame to the stack. With all of the above, I am trying to give the Seestar the best possible chance. I systematically level it before starting anything, regardless of whether it asks for it or not. And if the moons up and bright, and say sat in the east, I’ll pick a target in the west. I’ll try and place it where it is sheltered from the wind. I’m getting exhausted keep running outside, because every time I realise it’s not adding frames I go dashing out expecting to see clouds and, possibly, rain. And it’s most frustrating when the sky is crystal clear giving the Seestar no excuse. Right now I feel like sticking my boot under it 🤨 Oh, lastly, when I carefully pick the Seestar up, by gripping the tripod, I can feel a slight wobble in the ‘scope. I just assumed that this was a little play in the bearings, or gearing. Just wondering if this is par for the course, or if it should be totally free of any play? I do screw it fairly firmly to the tripod, so it cannot be attributed to the way it is mounted. Does any of this ring a bell, or have I got a Friday afternoon special?
  6. The first proper break in the clouds since purchase came last night. Unfortunately, because I’m still at the stage of wondering what it can do, I had it hopping around the sky at numerous various targets, instead of settling on just one project. I aim to be a lot more patient for it’s next outing. I was very pleased at what it was able to to do with the Orion Nebula though. Is there a way to get the Seestar to take shorter exposures than 10 seconds? It would be nice to be able to blend one with the final image without having the core blown out.
  7. If I ever get the hang of post-processing the DSO’s , then the next thing will be trying to get my head around .avi for the solar and lunar stuff. But I’m definitely putting that on the back burner for a while as my squirrel brain only takes in so much at any one time.
  8. @powerlord Downloaded Quickfits, and am delighted to report that it does, indeed, convert .fits to .tiffs. Much appreciated Stu 🙂. I’ll battle on and see if PS suits me at all, if not I’ll bag Affinity. Just trying to cling onto my £68 a bit longer if I can 😂
  9. Thanks Stu. I’ll have a peep at Quickfits. I watched the video you linked, and it looks very good indeed. Certainly a lot less intimidating than PS.
  10. @powerlord Thanks Stu. Please forgive my naievity, but I thought the images had already been stacked on the Seestar? I had watched a couple of PS tutorials, and had purchased a ProDigital Astronomy Tools Action Kit for PS to help make things a tad simpler. All I really wanted to be able to achieve in PS was to stretch the images to extract more data. I really am new to all of this imaging malarkey and, even with the Seestar removing all of the image acquisition workload, it’s still quite a steep learning cliff. So am I best off completely abandoning the PS route? PS: Re: Viewing the images…. I’ve actually downloaded ASIStudio which will let me have a decent gander at them in their unfettered form. So at least I have that bit covered 🙂
  11. First problem…. Tried to open the .fit files into Photoshop, but the format isn’t supported. Any idea how I can convert the files to .tiff on a Mac?
  12. Regarding the photos storage, my Seestar app asked for access to my photos during initial setup. Now, it just automatically drops the photos into my phone.
  13. I know it’s a bit nit-picky, but I find the fitting of the solar filter a bit of a pain. Not the actual inserting, but the orientation of the ‘scope. You almost invariably choose “Solar” from the parked position. It then asks you to ensure the filter is fitted before commencement. Again, almost invariably, it won’t be, and the scope is in the parked position so you can’t fit it. You then have to faff about getting it to target something that isn’t the sun, or move the scope manually, so you can get the filter on. Then it can go sun hunting. I don’t know why it just doesn’t raise itself up to 60 degrees or so when you choose solar, and then prompt you to attach the filter. Like I said, a bit nit-picky, and not the end of the world.
  14. Well the app allows you to reframe the target, so I could do it with stitching, yes. I’d have to brush up on my total lack of stitching skills however 😅. Worth thinking about as a plan B though, thanks 🙂
  15. I believe ZWO have stated that a mosaic mode will be on the cards at some point. Does anyone have any idea as to a rough timescale? Pleiades is calling, and I can’t bare to crop any of it out, lol.
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