LaurenceT

After failing miserably to get the moon to show my family last night I decided to do what I'd read and put the Seestar through the hoops of levelling, compass calibration and selecting a known bright star and doing a 3 point alignment. It seemed to do the trick and found the moon instantly but they'd all gone to bed by then so I found the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules and gave it about 18 minutes before I jacked it in and went to bed. I could probably miss out the first two steps next time but I'll ceratinly do the 3 point alignment.

I know, I bought one immediately before my wife finds out😎

I've just put my thumb through the solar filter 🫢

You could be right about the conditions but it didn't seem to affect my other setup. One thing that has baffled me is that the subs were labelled IRCUT files so I obviously failed to switch to the dual band filter, I had thought it was automatic when selecting a DSO, obviously not so no nebulosity!

I'm still having a struggle with my new Seestar, last night when I suddenly realized there were stars to be seen I had a go at the Flame Nebula. I imaged for 1 hour but had so many rejections due to star trailing that I've only finished up with 5 minutes of subs. Just to make an unfair comparison I also quickly set up my lightweight wide field kit and got an hour on the same target losing only 2 frames due to clouds. I'll do some processing later.

I haven't yet watched the video, maybe he mentions it but I've read that the sync button has disappeared because it's now being done automatically. Edit: yep, it's in the video! 😳

First clear night at about 23.00 so I chanced my luck and tried some lunar. I've only had the Seestar a few days and managed to image the sun within a few hours of opening the box without problems. Last night was a different matter however, it simply couldn't find the moon even after levelling and compass calibration. So I tried selecting some random nebula which it slewed to immediately and did a 3 star calibration. I backed out of that and tried the moon and it found it perfectly so I took a few videos during which it tracked perfectly. I still have to work out the finer details of AF when the green box is not on the moon. The sky looks clear right now so I might try some more solar. Image is a 1 minute video processed in Pipp, AutoStakkert and Dxo Photolab 3. It had a green tinge so I converted it to mono in Nik.

Looking at the specs of the Celestron I'm sure it would be a fantastic instrument.

I think I'd be more inclined to buy 6 Seestars for that money and establish The Large Back Garden Seestar Array. Edit: Actually I wouldn't 😄

First image, took all of 2 minutes after unboxing, clouds and sunspots are included apparently.

It arrived this afternoon and it hasn't stopped talking to me! Took all of 2 minutes after unpacking to take this shot of the sun, clouds and sunspots included.

I hope to use the Seestar to it's fullest capacity.

Yep, that makes sense, particularly the last bit🤣. Thanks.

What initially drew me to the Seestar was as an EAA replacement for my existing mini setup. I had been using the Evoguide 50ED EAA setup as described by Cuiv on YT. It was very quick and simple. All you needed was a mount like the Az GTi, an Evoguide 50ED and a Raspberry Pi with Stellarmate, I already had all these. All you had to do was level the scope and point north and away you went doing easy EAA. That was the theory anyway. To paraphrase Longfellow, when it was good it was very good, when it was bad it was horrid. So horrid in fact that after using it for the best part of last year I tore down the setup and gave up EAA, at least temporarily. The Seestar will do all of that for me with the additional bonus of taking reference images as you point out or if so inclined go the whole hog and do serious post processing. I've been referring to Telescopius in the past couple of days and realise the shortcomings of the Seestar scope FOV (it's essentially an Evoguide 50ED anyway) and realise that for different targets I will still rely on my other imaging scopes which is fine. My Seestar is arriving today 🙂.

The use of an equatorial wedge was denied by the Seestar users on Facebook that were claiming zero field rotation in integration times of 2 hours plus.

I've been getting this a bit wrong, surprise surprise! It wasn't a single exposure at all but 2hrs 35mins of 369 stacked images but even so I would expect considerable field rotation seeing that reviewers have suggested less than 1 hour on any single subject to avoid rotation. Have I got the concept of Seestar field rotation wrong?

Many thanks for that Kat

Thanks, so would a single unstacked exposure of 2.5 hours show field rotation?

I would have thought that the fact it is an alt az mount is the biggest factor in it's field rotation which makes it different from 'normal AP' which is done with an EQ mount. The Facebook comments seemed to suggest that ZWO have introduced something into the firmware which corrects for this.

I've been thinking about getting one of these for a little while and I've been watching many YT videos. I've also joined a couple of Facebook user groups to read more. I've been aware of the problem of field rotation and had read in many reviews that because of this integration time of over an hour was not recommended. Yesterday I saw a Facebook post claiming 2.5 hours of integration time without field rotation. When I commented about field rotation I received these replies: "Seestar uses a Plate Solution to align and register the stars. Once aligned it adds the result to the stack. At least that is my understanding and it seems to work well over the 2 or 3 hour time span" "The SeeStar will automatically align the rotation of each image as it is stacked. The outcome will have a fully register object but the outside edges of the image will show skewing. It is more apparent when using the individual images and stacking them on a computer." Is this now the experience of other users? Anyway, I ordered one yesterday (not based on this information), hopefully will arrive tomorrow.

Thanks for the replies everyone and apologies for not responding sooner but I've been in Devon for a friends funeral. I'll spend tomorrow reading and digesting all that's been written here.

I discovered the disadvantage of a square sensor, no matter how I rotated the camera I couldn't get it to fit and then I had to crop it a small amount. I really should have used my Askar FMA 180 and got the Soul nebula as well. It was a first for me as I took some flats as well, don't know of they made any difference. Also I failed yet again in setting up guiding, seems to be a blank spot for me so all subs unguided. Also I never quite know how set the red colour, sometimes too light other times too intense! WO ZS61ii, SA GTi mount, Asiair Plus, L-Enhance filter, 150x60 second subs. Astropixelprocessor, Photoshop, Gimp.

Well done Lee, it's a lovely image. By coincidence tonight was the first time since coming to this hobby that I took the plunge and took my first flat frames!😀

Brilliant use of a vintage lens! What lens were you using? I've got a couple of older Canon FD lenses, my favourite being the 135mm F2.8. I know I could use this for astrophotography but because I already have an Askar FMA180 it doesn't seem worth it. However, having seen what you are doing has made me think again. All it needs is a few adapters (famous last words!).

Excellent image, I like the detail in the core not being blown out.