Giles_B

Finally saw first light after the clouds parted early on Saturday morning. Cycled through IC410, M82 and finally M78 at about 5am. Left the Seestar stacking on M78 while I got a few hours sleep. I can only seem to access these tiny jpgs, which don't look so impressive - here's M78 with *lots* of rotation - about 450 10- second subs: All the FITS were saved, and so I spent the afternoon trying to follow DeepSpaceAstro's beginners guide to Siril - The results won't rock anyone's world, but I'm fairly pleased with a couple of hours playing:

Thanks - just finally had my first light after a cloudy week, and this is just the question I was asking and the answers I was looking for! The basic guide to Siril is really helpful. Could anyone recommend a tutorial that I could follow if I wanted to do more advanced processing of s50 images? I much prefer a written tutorial to follow over a video.

Duh, didn't notice it was iOS. I'm also on Android. Spotted the announcement when I was searching for a way to feedback to ZWO about the app not having an option to get the SeeStar to forget networks and passwords. It's stickied on the Seestar user forum, so it was the first thing I saw. No need to register to read it, at least not on my phone.

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.

Shipping is way more reasonable from that seller than the one I checked. For a tenner shipped, I think that's reasonable for a lens cover. On the dew shield, would it make much difference given you already have dew control? Serious question, I'd consider buying if it would. Finally got the Seestar under the skies. Tried the moon this morning but Seestar couldn't find it and neither could i manually in the short time available. Found the sun no problem just now. Took some video but its all a bit windy.

Was this the "Hercules metal dust cap for the Seestar S50"? Aliexpress UK has it for £7 plus £23 postage! Hope you got a better deal in Canada. Think I'll pass for now...

Busy all weekend and no clear skies here since delivery on Friday in any event, but at last I'm having a play tonight. Just got it setup to work with in home wifi mode with a repeater, so the network signal gets down the garden. Current forecast is for clear skies both Friday and Saturday day and night so I want to be ready (Friday and Saturday! When does that ever happen? Hope it holds.) Couple of things I've observed tonight: (1) There doesn't seem to be a setting to forget individual network settings. Once they are set, they are locked in until the reset key is pressed. I've had to reset and start again from scratch to forget my home router and to switch from 5GhZ to 2.4GhZ signal (newly bought repeater turns out to be 2.4GhZ only). (2) The battery seems to drain surprisingly fast - down to 92% after an hour of fiddling with the network. Looks like an external battery will be needed once the SeeStar is called on to do any extended observing. (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!

Me too - just got the dispatch notice, a nice surprise - I ordered in July

It's a darn sight more interesting than most 404 errors!

+1 on the filter adaptor!

Sorry - I didn't want to sound churlish and it's obvious from the comments that's how it came across. Yes the ability to visualise and image the Sun is a great addition and shows the versatility of the SeeStar, and it will add a lot of enjoyment - I certainly didn't want to damp anyone's fire. All I was really saying was the obvious - that WL is a nice addition to the scope, but that the real magic is in its ability to visualise DSOs.

I doubt this filter compares to a dedicated WL setup with Herschel wedge and a continuum filter. Even the stacked pictures that have been posted look inferior to the sorts of visual results I'm used to. It clearly is a versatile telescope, but as a visual observer it is the DSO performance that attracts me - it has no viable competitor unless you are willing to spend megabucks on a night vision system.

That is a tremendously kind offer - well, two offers really - (and this sort of kindness is very much an SGL thing!). I'm not going to waste your time though, because I think I will probably stick with a single finder for the time being - I tend to look for specific things that either need the starsense or a finderscope (depending on how lazy I'm feeling) or the telrad. It was really an idle interest about the reinforcing plate because of other projects (currently I'm planning to attach the old focuser from the OOUK VX10 to a Celestron 130Z and wondering if I'll need to reinforce the tube in some way). So really the info about how you manufactured a plate is all I need. The offer is very much appreciated though

Balance is not really a problem, sliding the scope forward or backwards in the rings is all it takes. @NGC 1502 Any tips on where would you get a plate of the correct curvature to use for reinforcement?

I've recently refashioned my homemade Starsense explorer mount so I can attach it to the standard finderscope shoe of my telescope. It now weights 480g, including the dovetail. Obviously this takes up the finder shoe, although I could buy one of those splitters that allows two or three other finding devices to share the same shoe. While I don't doubt that the standard finderscope shoe on my VX10 is up to the current weight, I did wonder how much load you can get away with before you run into problems distorting the tube or otherwise wrecking your equipment. Obviously the answer will be different for different setups - my newtonian tube is aluminium so I'd guess it might be more prone to distortion than a steel tube newt or a closed refractor tube. Has anyone overloaded a finderscope shoe, or alternatively have you had some experience of one taking 'miraculous' loads?

Great picture - I hadn't thought to put a camper van on my astro wishlist before this!

I'd +1 for selling on SGL first, Astrobuysell UK second, and Ebay a very distant third. Unless what you are selling is much in demand, or very cheap, things don't always sell very quickly, but they do sell eventually. Everything on SGL / ABS runs on trust, but this seems to keep things running on a far more civil level than the ebay system, whose USP is that people can't trust one another. As @Carbon Brush says, you can check people's history on all of these platforms, and you generally get a better idea on SGL - and to some extent ABS - of who you are dealing with.

Much better sky quality last night, and much better views - I spent two hours (1-3am) outside with 2/3 of this time spent viewing Saturn with a barlowed 9mm eyepiece - i.e 267x - I found that the Baader Contrast Booster gave me the most consistently good views of the Cassini gap and brought out some of Saturn's banding. The improvement for Jupiter was less profound, but still satisfying. Difficult to tell how much of the difference was down to the filter and how much to the conditions. Setting things up in alt-az was helpful - the ability to tweak the position accurately meant interruptions were shorter and having the scope up high was more comfortable. Downsides were that there was a wobble each time I tweaked the focuser, and the size of the scope made the controls hard to reach (it turned out my little-used extenders wouldn't grip the controls). All things that would prompt me to consider some sort of equatorial mount. I think this would also make an ADM more usable. Thanks for all the advice. Definitely feels like I've got some options beyond just grinning and bearing it!

This is great - I feel like I'm getting a good list of ways to incrementally improve things. Flocking, experiment with an ADM, and I'll look for the EQ platform instructions on the forum. A good clear night tonight so I'll get out later and try Saturn and Jupiter again, with the filters at the ready. For the first time I've mounted the scope alt-az and this might help to keep the target in view in a bit more of a relaxed way - just have to see if the mount will take it - it should do.

Hopefully cooldown is not a big problem as the scope is kept in the shed. I think probably the Herschel wedge will dim Saturn too much. May get away with it on Jupiter, although I find the ND 0.9 a bit dim, so maybe not. Good to know you get good results from the ADC @globular - and this might be a good route for me to try - although I will need to double check that I do have the focal range needed. I suspect the proof will be in the trying. I presume you use a 2x Barlow in the train with your f10.5 SCT?

Yes, blue worked well for me on Venus too (didn't try green) - not sure why I didn't play with filters the last couple of times. I'll make sure I try it next time. I didn't find brightness was a big problem once I'd got to high magnifications. Has anyone had good experiences using an atmospheric dispersion corrector? The way my Newtonian is now set up I use a 3.5" extension, so I have a *lot* of potential in-focus (which seems to be the major barrier to using an ADC on a newt).

Another year, another planetary observing season - I've managed to get out a couple of times this month in the small hours for an hour or so. I've worked out I can manage about an hour between 1am-3am and still work okay the next day if I get an early night and don't have too early a start. As with the previous two years, I'm off to an enthusiastic start, but I'm plagued by the muddiness and lack of detail in the views I'm getting. DSO views are fine, although they lack contrast when I observe in my Bortle 5 garden. They are better when I get to the countryside. But planets... Last night I felt I could make out Jupiter's banding but not much else. After 45 minutes at the eyepiece I could barely make out the Cassini gap on Saturn, just a faint hint of the gap coming and going at the ring edges. I'm using a 10" Newtonian (an Orion Optics VX10, mounted on a dobsonian base). I have had very good views of the planets, but only on 1 or two nights a year where the seeing has been exceptional. Mostly the visuals are annoyingly muddy. I find myself ticking off the list of things that might be contributing to dull views, and what I might do to help make them better. I once suspected that my collimation might be a problem, and I'm now absolutely sure it is not. Laser collimation is bang on and confirmed in star testing. The other culprits may be the generally limited time at the eyepiece, poor seeing and the mirrors themselves. By limited time at the eyepiece I mean limited both in session length (usually not more than 90 minutes) and limited quantity of sessions (maximum four per month). I try to spend a lot of time physically at the eyepiece, but inevitably pushing the dob means that I occasionally lose the target at high magnification. Seeing-wise, there are not many stars in the sky to the naked eye and they generally show atmospheric wobbliness. Bristol isn't very high above sea level so the atmosphere is pretty thick. The planets shimmer about a bit in the eyepiece once I get to around 13mm. The primary mirror looks in good condition. I cleaned it using the suggested methods (slightly soapy water, gentle wiping with wet cotton wool and rinsing with distilled water) last time I took the scope apart to fit a new focuser. There are a few very light scratches (I fear I could have caused some when I cleaned it) but nothing that leads me to think they may be causing the problem. The mirror seems bright. A label on the mirror side dates it to 11/07/08 - so a good 15 years. I haven't given as thorough attention to the secondary, but it seemed bright when I dismantled the scope. Is there a way I can improve the visuals I'm getting? As I see it the options are: 1. Invest in some sort of EQ tracking system. For a 10" newtonian an EQ6 will be necessary, which feels like overkill for visual. However, there are some EQ bases for dobs - could this help me to stay at the eyepiece more and fiddle around finding the target less? 2. Recoat the mirrors: While I don't see an indication that I need to coat the mirrors, the coatings are 15 years old and show a bit of use (i.e. the light scratches) - could recoating potentially give a minor boost to the contrast and improve the planetary views? 3. Use an atmospheric dispersion corrector: I only became aware of these in the last 12 months but I'm aware they are used for visual as well as well as AP - could this help given that Jupiter and Saturn are generally low or low-ish in the sky? I do realise I should take in the usual caveats - that I am expecting too much from the actual conditions. That if I want amazing results I should do AP... etc. so these are not the answers I am looking for - I do enjoy visual and love the time I get observing. But like most amateurs, I just want to push the envelope a little bit further. Do let me know your thoughts.

Ditto that - last year I bought my Nagler zoom second-hand from a seller in the USA through Astromart. I paid $350 (£290 at the time) for the zoom, but then had £75 of fees added for customs and import. There was no UK stock at the time, so saving money was not the primary motivation, however, the total came to close to the price of a new zoom (£400 at the time) once customs was factored in.

I agree - 'horses for courses' as we say in the UK. It should go without saying that what is 'dull and monotonous' for one person is another person's all-consuming interest - and quite right too. All that diversity brings a lot of extra colour and interest to us all. The world would be pretty boring if we all liked the same things.

ZWO posted on the FB group that shipping is still on track for late August with first units arriving in our sticky hands by September