Giles_B

It will have stored the subs on the Seestar, just not stacked them. I've had the same happen to me when I left the Seestar enhancing an object overnight and it had run out of battery and powered down.

I guess location service covers any location finding method. I usually connect the Seestar to my home WiFi in base mode, but the app works when I connect my tablet direct to the Seestar WiFi, so location services must store recent location data. I presume location is used for the weather forecast and the compass and plate solving are used for object location.

I'm using a Xiaomi MiPad 4 (running a custom ROM) - no GPS and works fine with the SeeStar. The tablet gets location data from other sources. Not as fine grained as GPS but fine for astronomy.

Seestar specifies a minimum of android OS 8 - the Honor x9 is Android 11, so should work fine. Not sure how handy you are with tech, but it's possible there is a custom rom you could use to update you Galaxy tab to a more recent version of Android: https://xdaforums.com/f/galaxy-tab-3-10-1-android-development.2405/

I agree with @Lee_P - I've had no problem with dust, the lens is nicely tucked up when the Seestar is not in use, plus I store it in the carry box. However Ebay and Aliexpress both list lens caps if you want one neverthless (or have the urge to accessorise your new scope!)

Fishponds - we are further into the light dome, but have green spaces on two sides, so not much glare at ground level and a Bortle 5 on a good night.

I've found the performance pretty great in the inner suburbs of Bristol - I'll be interested to hear what you make of it.

My experience is that everything works fine without any additional gubbins. @powerlord was selling some 3D printed filter holders and bahtinov masks -you could try PMing him? That said, I can't say I've found the need to use either the mask or external filters them yet. Someone else posted something on the thread comparing an L-Extreme with the inbuilt filter, and there didn't seem much difference there either. Various sellers on ebay selling dew shields - but I find the inbuilt dew controller works great. The one thing you might want is an external battery as the dew control eats the power a bit. Whether you need a lens cap is debateable - I'm going without but plenty of others have bought aftermarket caps - again, ebay seems like the simplest source.

I worried about the humidity, but it seems to work fine in the great British outdoors at all hours if the day and night. I'd guess the humidity is usually way above 60%. You can mute it. You don't need the speech to set it up, it's really intuitive and easy.

Self find - go to solar system in the menu, pick a planet (or a dwarf planet - Pluto is in there) and SeeStar did the rest. The solar menu also turns the gain down considerably, Jupiter is far less exposed than the astro mode - almost looks Ike you *could* get some details from Jupiter if the seeing was very good.

Just tried it out - found Jupiter and Saturn okay. Wouldn't autofocus on Jupiter - maybe too bright for the algorithm? Anyway, the results are below. I thought a stop frame of Jupiter's moons would be good fun. But the feature is strictly in the "novelty" bracket for me.

In case you missed it, the new update and firmware adds a planetary mode (I've yet to try it out): "New Features 1. Added the Planetary Mode. 2. Added French voice prompts. 3. Added Brazilian Portuguese. 4. 4. Support manual focus in Solar, Lunar, Scenery, and Planetary modes. 5. 5. Added Solar in Objects and added objects to the Named Star list. 6. Reduce the speed of the Joystick in the slow speed mode. 7. JPG saved from Fits supports watermark. 8. Support overseas map services. Optimized 1. Optimized text and UI. 2. Fixed known bugs."

Not only is avoiding collision with a full height tripod a bit easier, I would think the wide base would be enough to keep it upright so long as it was the typical low speed blundering into something in the dark scenario. My preference is for a fairly heavy tripod though - I use an EQ6 tripod with an extension, so the whole thing weights a ton and is rock solid. Partly this is because I think its less likely someone with light fingers would get into the garden, pick up the SeeStar and carry it away when it is unattended if it's attached to something heavy!

I'd forgotten the slug episode - that was another near miss 😬

Yes, I also found the height of the supplied tripod a bit of a liability, and I had a few near misses culminating in tripping over the whole set-up. Much happier with it attached to EQ6 tripod, even if the cost of the adaptor took a bit of getting used to.

Hi Ande, It sounds to me like there is a problem with your SeeStar and I'd be tempted to send it back - hopefully you did not order it direct from ZWO My own experience using it in Bortle 5-6, and sometimes under pretty cloudy skies - is that it gets surprisingly good images even in those conditions within a few minutes to half and hour. Autofocus is always needed but takes less than a minute, with no need for additional intervention. They time I have seen star trails is when it is pointing to objects that are nearly at its maximum altitude, and then it discards the images. I think it does drop a reasonable amount of frames, however nowhere near as many as you describe - perhaps four times less than in your example. The only part of your experience that sounds "normal" is the slight play in the scope, which I agree seems like normal play in the gearing when the motor is not engaged.

I've been restacking the Fits from scratch. I'm a total beginner, but I think I'm getting some improvements in the image with a bit of playing in Sirilic, Siril and Photoshop. I worked on 'Ghost of Cassiopeia' IC63 tonight. I had about four long sessions over the past month. All the images were quite rotated and I wanted to see if I could get something a bit better with reprocessing. Here's the original and the reprocessed images: Obviously it's cropped a bit, but other than that I took the following steps: I began by looking at the Fits - four nights and 768 subs I divided these into 7 x roughly 30 minute sessions in Sirillic (my thinking is that I should get less rotation this way - not sure if that's correct) Dragged and dropped files into Sirillic - added the Dark Library dark that had been rotated 90 degrees in ASTAP to give the correct orientation Used identical stacking parameters for all layers. Under the "properties" tab in SIrilic I selected: Stack - mean Rejection type - linear fit Weighting - WFWHM Rejecting filter - WFWHM 40% Once stacking complete the stacked image was too badly rotated with banding in a horrendous diamond shape around the nebula. So I Retried in Sirilic - removed first 3 sessions, and this gave a better stacked image. Once this was done I did a few quick steps in Siril: 1. Background extraction - removed any samples that went over the nebula or bright stars 2. Saved then Platesolved the stacked Fit in ASTAP 3. Reloaded into Siril and did a photometric colour callibration 4. Removed green noise 5. Did a starnet removal All that took about 5 minutes maximum I then went into the Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch Transformation - this is the step to spend time on. First set the type of stretch to "generalised hyperbolic transform" (which is the default) 1. Select a point in the middle of the curve to set a symmetry point 2. Set the shadow protection point just below the symmetry point 3. Set the local stretch intensity to something quite aggressive - I started with 5 4. Move the stretch factor slider until just before the curve starts to break up into spikes 5. "Apply" and repeat about a dozen times, gradually backing off on the 'local stretch intensity' 6. After about a dozen times the curve will be stretched out and the background will be getting a bit light - select 'Linear Stretch (BP Shift)' in the type of stretch and gradually use the slider to drag the curve back toward the black point (to the left) - don't put your curve below the black point as this will lose your data 7. Keep repeating these steps. Turn of different colour channels and stretch channels separately if you have the time. Try to stop the curve from getting spikey. If you go to far, you can always unstretch by using the "inverse hyperbolic transform" type of stretch Once you've got the most detail you can from the nebula, save the image as a "Tif" file and open in photoshop 1. Use the camera raw filter to darken the image a bit, by playing with contrast and shadow 2. Denoise the image (I used topaz denoise) 3. Save the image and reopen in Siril and resave as a Fit file Now just use the star recomposition tool to add the starnet layer back onto the starless image. Play with the stretch of the background and the star layer, changing the black point if you want the sky darker. Check the image and crop if necessary! All in all this can be done quickly, but time invested on the stretching pays off in my opinion. The only thing I'd add is that sometimes the stretching works better if the stars are left in the image and removed at a later time. In this case I save the image, do a starnet removal, then go back to the original RGB image, later recombining with the unstretch stars. I find this works well for very faint objects.

I'm stacking in sirilic which gives easy control over the stacking parameters. The master dark is the wrong orientation and needs to be rotated 90 degrees or it won't stack. I didn't find the master dark made a difference anyway. I'm finding making improvements with sirilic and siril a fine art, and what works best varies with the image. I'm not at the computer but will post later giving a worked example.

Okay - I'm pretty new to this, and wasn't aware that this sort of 3rd party support wasn't included - it sounds like its just implementing the open source stuff on the Asiair hardware, which I agree is much less interesting. "What should we do?" is the central question of moral philosophy, but a digression on these lines probably isn't warranted! I realise all this discussion is already quite off topic It's kind of up to you whether you think it's important or something to care about. Personally, I like expanding my horizons in all directions.... including the backstory of ZWO's business model, the question of open sources, and all.

I've not tried to use them, but there are custom kernels for the asiair at openastro https://www.openastro.net/

Totally agree, ZWO are certainly not alone, and in fairness, it doesn't seem to have an impact on the open software community - overall people still feel willing to contribute. And of course, there is an active community reverse engineering the asiair so it works with other hardware, if you feel tempted to go down that line.

I love my Seestar and the ease with which a beginner can get into astro with the ZWO ecosystem. But we should all have open eyes about this relationship - in terms of open source, it is increasingly clear ZWO have been reprehensible in their abuse of open source development. Cracked Asiair software code shows it is built on modifications of open source astronomy tools (the INDI server, astronomy.net, even parts of SIRIL). Where it supports other manufacturers, ZWO have modified the code to stop the software working with non-ZWO hardware. The code is open source under various LGPL licenses. ZWO has refused to publish and distribute their modified source code in violation of the licence. They have been warned but still have not complied. It's rotten behaviour but international copyright law is deep dark and expensive, so who's going to Sue? Not enthusiasts who have developed the original code for no pay in their spare time... https://disq.us/url?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indilib.org%2Fforum%2Fdevelopment%2F10380-asiair-and-opensource-software-licences.html%3Fstart%3D12%2390031%3AXQ6jVceiroFaqGgGuH08bXO_qfk&cuid=7366295 The ZWO business model is a careful curated but closed ecosystem. It's very doubtful this will change incidentally, Apple pioneered this approach (albeit in a slightly different ways and grander scale). So I'm not saying that ZWO are especially villainous, more that this is becoming a successful model that other businesses are replicating.

A Barlow is a useful tool, but not one I think is essential to your kit. I think a barlow was one of the first things I rushed to buy, but I found it didn't get much use. I sold it, then later bought another very cheaply second hand, but found it didn't enhance the views at all. Finally I bought a decent Televue x2, and I'm currently looking for a x3 or x5, but only because I've become interested in photographing the planets and its seems like a barlow is useful for that because the camera otherwise is fixed to the telescopes magnification. Barlows - like eyepieces - vary in quality and it is worth buying a decent one that does not introduce too much distortion into the image. Even a good one will only be as good as the eyepiece you are barlowing, so worth getting a few good quality eyepieces first, then seeing if the barlow would help extend your range.

I hadn't realised the slider affects the final processed image - that's very helpful to know.

Thanks - looking at the FOV simulator I'd thought the small pixel size of the 585MC would make it a poor choice - even at 5x Barlow Saturn is a bit lost at 1200mm focal length. It's also a bit outside my budget, but maybe I should reconsider - presumably even a small image at a high pixel count contains a lot of information? The VX10 can also only do equatorial for around 1 hour before needing to be reset, so I'd seen it primarily as a planetary scope (albeit the SeeStar has opened my eyes to what can be achieved with relatively short exposures), Hopefully I have in the 130mm Newt something small enough to sit on the Star Adventurer for longer exposures (I have a better focuser lined up, just need to 3D print something to mount it on). Presumably I wouldn't need a light bucket like to VX10 to get the most out of the 585MC? @Cosmic Geoff The "primary" aim is really solar system - the DSO itch is scratched by the SeeStar - but I'd like something that would allow some experiments with DSOs, and something that would allow solar. Maybe that isn't possible and I need three cameras 😲. It's a bit tricky deciding from the manufacturers info, because this often claims a camera ticks a few boxes. Interesting to see your experiments with imaging M1 - this is really what I had in mind - something with different limitations to the SeeStar to compare and contrast.