DaveL59

Seems it doesn't remove aircraft tracks?

I'm just wondering when the classic phrase "Frying Tonight" will be uttered... 😉 

I think the bottom line is bang for buck and here the Seestar does deliver quite well. It won't suit everyone neither will the dwarf but you could have both for the cost of one of the other 2 and then some. For those of us that want hassle free at an affordable price point it fits the bill very nicely IMHO. Quite likely I'd have had to spend way more than £500 to use my SynScan EQ5 for something like this, a faster scope, cameras, guiding etc and the "fun" of getting it all to work. Then on top having dismantle, set up, polar align each time I want to use it and then take it all down after. It'd soon get to be a drag esp compared to just popping the EQ5 tripod outside, fit the S50 and power up.

side-by-side ish compare of the S50, dwarf2, vespera and evscope2 unfortunately in french so I wasn't following very well.

their ratings:

On 07/10/2023 at 21:47, Zermelo said:

That's very impressive (and expensive).

When I was at school, the Farad seemed to be a hopelessly optimistic unit. 100μF was a big capacitor! Most were measured in nF, or even pF.

so true, tho some of those large paper capacitors were quite impressive when given high voltage (mains) as confetti generators 😉 

2 hours ago, mcwill said:

Using the iOS version of the app, the watermarked jpegs are auto saved to the photo library. 

Maybe a permissions thing and you need to give the app access to your photos?

On android they land in the images folder so should show in the photo gallery app. I've just picked the ones I want and email to myself then I can pick those up from my PC to snippy into a forum post. Or use Dex to drop the files directly into a folder on the PC.

The problem with a lot of modern electronics gear is there is no true off switch, it's done instead by a momentary action switch that triggers a component to energise the main board. So there's likely some leakage there and if a BMS is fitted it may be adding a small drain also.

On some cars that have a bulb monitoring system you can also find that they will add drain on your car battery if left parked for long periods, more so if you switch from filament to LED bulbs that are CANbus types. The Alfa 156 IIRC could suffer from this which was likely part of the issue I had with it, battery would be down to 50% in 2 weeks on the v6 so I kept it hooked to a smart charger when not in use.

Other than that, as Jim said, batteries will chemically return to a neutral state over time, the decay lost slowly as heat. Downside can be the degradation of the electrodes/electrolytics meaning less total capacity over time.

Wow, a nice result there. Yep some zooms when tilted will creep, either extend or retract depending which wahy you're tilting, a rubber band may help.

as an afterthought, is there a focus to infinity trick for the camera? Some Fuji's have so you can get it to crank the lens to its set infinity (as far as the AF thinks) and then switch to MF and it'll stay there. How close that is to where you need focus to be is the question tho.

Down here it wasn't looking great then a load of cloud rolled over from the north and while a gap did eventually appear there was more cloud following so I didn't bother. Tomorrow night it'd have to be clear early for me as I'll be working from early Sunday so sleep will have to have priority. At least this rig is a drop and play setup so will see how it goes.

4 hours ago, powerlord said:

You should maybe tell the police in case it's serious ?

nah, they've been occasional callers to next door over the past years, not always getting an answer at the door even when they are clearly inside. Usually looking for a specific individual as I've spoken with them in the past when they've knocked here. Informed them about the rear escape route back then too so they can cover it if needed 😉 

Just been quite amusing to see the goings on after that SSID broadcast, got them spooked maybe 😄 

On 01/10/2023 at 17:42, DaveL59 said:

Maybe but I've reason to secure things as the folks directly next door seem highly dubious to me. In fact since setting up that open SSID with lets say a play on a UK crime agency as its ID looks like someone had a try to connect:

Funny too, having broadcast that ID yesterday eve then turning it off, its back on today and there was a flurry of activity this afternoon and 2 people loading their cars with belongings and quickly departing 😄

 

hmmm so after the quick exodus of 2 from next door, tonight under cover of darkness a lot of stuff being shifted out to I guess a van parked further up the road. An amusing turn of events perhaps :-D 

1 hour ago, Stu1smartcookie said:

i will love the SS... i know it , as its right up my street being a lazy  astro photograher  😂

Well I'll join the lazy camp too then 😉

I certainly wouldn't have gone to the trouble of building my own and then spend hours collecting and integrating data after the frustrations of getting it all working, not to mention the cost (tho I do already have an EQ5 SynScan mount my scopes are F10 ish). EEVA was more what I was considering as my eyes are often too tired at the end of the day, but this little rig lets me have both options/advantages in a simple plug-n-play rig. win win IMHO 🙂 

I'd wish you clear skies so you get a chance to give it a test drive, but perhaps that's why we never get them. Maybe we should start wishing each other cloudy skies instead, like actors say "break a leg" 😉

6 hours ago, happy-kat said:

A glow in the dark (they aren't bright) stick on stars would point the direction 

doing a quick check with a red light, the reflective strips look good enough. I'd added some to the tripod legs also so you hopefully get less chance of stumbling into them, low cost safety add-on 😉 

Yeah that was my thinking too, that it probably could focus so perhaps the idea of adding something other than a filter ahead of the objective won't fly. I didn't try MF as I didn't have a lot of time earlier but tomorrow if the moon is up at the right time I might give that a go, well clouds etc permitting that is.

2 hours ago, powerlord said:

interesting. and does it work ? I mean you could test during the day on scenery stuff ?

So gave it a quick go on the top of a chestnut tree that's perhaps 80M or so away, its too low even on the EQ5 tripod to get to much else that's a bit further away. It tries but didn't find focus at all leaving a fuzzy image that may have been slightly magnified. Of course the x1.4 may well have brought the "image" closer than the min focus the S50 is able to handle, so overall an inconclusive first quick test. Back on another meeting call again so I guess I'll try again either later or when I've a chance to.

One thing that wasn't so good tho, when I told the S50 to power off it only returned part-way before powering down so had to power it back up and tell it again which then completed the proper parking before shutting down.

30 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

A glow in the dark (they aren't bright) stick on stars would point the direction 

reflective. Might get something that self-glows down the road but then storing in the case it ships with wouldn't energise them so that'd need some evening sun exposing to work I expect.

3 minutes ago, powerlord said:

interesting. and does it work ? I mean you could test during the day on scenery stuff ?

hadn't had the chance yet, WFH and all that, too many meetings unfortunately.

Many thanks to @powerlord this morning I received the mask and filter adaptors for the S50, here showing it fitted with a 48-49mm photo step-down adaptor:

Both are a perfect fit into my S50, a couple pics showing the camera lens hood and x1.4 tele-extender which I hope to get a chance to test at some stage:

The Tele lens is lightweight so shouldn't fall off, famous last words, and I've the corresponding wide lens as well so could give that a go too. The lens hood will be mainly to shield the objective from the glare of one side's white-light CCTV and the other side leaving lights on flooding the garden since they don't close their blinds.

That's fluorescent tape I've fitted by the way, hopefully will help me see roughly where its pointing in near darkness 😉 

Agreed, I know my grandson who's not yet skool age would be chuffed and his older sister would likely too. She's seen it via the Starsense explorer LT70 but trying to track on a manual mount ain't so much fun when a little 8YO wants to see. With this its on the tablet screen so they can both see together and can then compare to the 3D planets puzzle she got for her birthday recently. Little bro now wants the same when he's a little older. Sure you won't pick out detail but for little ones just seeing it at all is something. Who knows they may come out with an add-on like a tele-extender to get you something more usable 😉 

Looks good Stu, tho how much do those cost? Probably not something I'd be buying at least not for a while.
edit - not to worry, looked it up, £163 - ouch

Another vid on Lunar/planetary

Essentially planets are just too small with the native S50 as already noted in his and others' earlier vids.

18 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

BBC says clear sky - it's absolutely pouring down!

did they happen to mention in which part of the world? 😉 

20 hours ago, Giles_B said:

 

(3) The short tripod might be a problem - spent 30 minutes with the SeeStar set up at the end of the garden making sure I could connect from indoors, and when I brought the SeeStar back inside I found a juicy snail that had made its way to a centimetre from the aperture - a cleaning job I'd prefer to avoid!

I did have some other thoughts re slugs/snails. I know copper tape is largely a myth but a variant on that might work. A circle of copper tape on the plastic section of the lower leg connected to +12v and ground to the metal leg. If they are close enough together that just might fry them or at least get them to turn back 😉

I had a bad experience of slugs when one got into the cat flap and fried itself across the electronics. Thankfully after a tedious clean-up the thing still worked tho it had scrambled the chip codes so neither kitty could get back into the house until I managed to nab them and reprogram them back into the memory. 

Now with the short tripod that's carbon rather than metal so a couple rings 1cm apart might work...

11 minutes ago, Giles_B said:

Just FYI I spotted that the public beta of the the seestar app v1.9 is available - the info was posted a couple of days ago.

https://bbs.zwoastro.com/d/16906-seestar-app-v190-ios-public-beta-version-is-released

From the announcement:

"

New Features

• Added Time-lapse feature in Solar Mode
• Added stack failure alert for image enhancing

Optimizations

• Optimized text and UI
• Fixed known bugs

"

This is hot off the press 2 days ago. So sorry if I've missed earlier posts here about this.

 

Wonder what the text & UI fixes were? Doesn't help as I'm on android tho so can't test anyway 🙂 

Did you need to register somewhere for this tho, as I've not bothered so far?

Let's hope nobody does a rain dance then 😉 

I'm wondering about the size of the bill NASA will be getting for all their old junk still floating about up there 😉