Giles_B

I'm having some issues with retrieving (rather than just viewing) the stacked images from SeeStar (no problem getting the fits and stacking them myself). I've worked around this by taking screenshots of the images - these are my favourites from the lovely clear spell on Saturday night. Generally I tried to linger on the objects for a while to see how much detail the SeeStar could extract, but I'd emphasise that the results were generally very impressive after a couple of minutes or less:

17 hours ago, DaveL59 said:

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.

Well after a lot of searching they are definitely not there on my phone - I can view, but not retrieve the images from the cloud. Could be the android version - my phone is on Android 9. I can check this out next time by using my tablet, which is running Android 13 - instead of the phone to access the SeesStar. For now I can take screenshots of the photos from the cloud to share the images. Which is a bit clunky, but it's a workaround. That said, I've found playing with Siril and photoshop surprisingly satisfying and straightforward, so I imagine I will reprocess most images anyway.

9 minutes 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?

You were right - permission to access phone storage was not set on the app. Still can't find the jpegs, but hopefully next time I connect with seestar and process an image they will be saved to my photos!

How is everyone getting the watermarked processed jpegs from the SeeStar? I can copy the jpeg thumbnail and fits files to my PC but can't seem to view the watermarked processed jpeg images outside the app - they are not on my phone or the SeeStar as far as I can see. I'm running the android 1.8 app and the latest firmware (from memory version 1.58)

Just getting familiar with Siril and the SeeStar, one after another. This is M82 - 27 10-second exposures over 7 mins. The image was pretty much as is from the first exposure, really showing the SeeStar's potential for object enhancement in real time.

I had some problems getting the processed jpg because the app wasn't signed in - hence the scrappy original jpg here. Later tidied up in Siril for a prettier version.

Original:

Processed:

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.

1 hour ago, powerlord said:

sigh.

https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-seestar-s50.html?spm=a2g0o.home.search.0

imho a waste of money but each to their own..

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. 

4 hours ago, LDW1 said:

Just bought a lens cover and dew shield for the SS from AliExpress !

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!

3 hours ago, DaveL59 said:

ooh I just got a notification of dispatch from FLO, gobsmacked as I was expecting a longer wait 🙂 

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 hour ago, DaveL59 said:

I did hit buy on the ebay one, but if you do go ahead I'd be happy to buy  one and the filter adaptor if you do one of those too, might work well for if/when I give the tele lens add-on a go 🙂 

+1 on the filter adaptor!

8 hours ago, LDW1 said:

If you are a WL / Ha astronomer you must know, I hope you know, that when viewing the sun especially in the afternoon when max heat is rising and a breeze has come up that solar seeing conditions can change by the minute especially when taking photos ie good one moment and pp the next. So why would taking them with the SS be any different, criticize all you want but make sure you know your solar ........... !   PS:  So when many  of these solar pics were taken who knows the conditions !

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.

10 hours ago, DaveL59 said:

It ships with a solar filter that pops in in front of the objective so can do solar out of the box 🙂 

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?