ZWO Seestar 50

[Giles_B]

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.

 

[DaveL59]

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?

[Giles_B]

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.

[powerlord]

Feedback is right in the app Giles.

 

[DaveL59]

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...

[powerlord]

6 minutes ago, DaveL59 said:

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...

stand it in a basin of water ? cover the legs in salt ? stick a bit of flat A4 card between the seestar and tripod ?

[powerlord]

8mins into crescent nebula using L-extreme filter rather than built in dual band.

Seems to be working nicely.

Stu

 

[DaveL59]

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.

 

Edited October 3, 2023 by DaveL59

[powerlord]

oh I wouldn't buy one for the S50 - I just have them for the 'real' kit. I just wanted to see if 10s exposures would work with it. I'm sure the inbuilt wider dual band if great for the S50. It's really just an 'if you have one already'.

I mean, the whole S50 cost me 300 quid. An 2" L-extreme costs 210 quid. don't buy one just for an S50!

I also have my canon M100 mounted on it by the way - will see what that looks like in a bit..

clouding up soon, so prob only for 30 mins left.

stu

[powerlord]

huh.. so the results of having the canon M100 mounted are.. surprising.

surprisingly bad. bare in mind that during this time it was shoot the cresent nebula and stacking all the files fine, so the camera was not affecting the tracking of the S50.

However every single frame bar one is like this. And it was set at 70mm equivalent, 20 sec exposures.

Now, either the S50 is doing some really fancy optical micro correction on top of the AZ movement, and missing this, results in this. Or, more likely I think - the rubbish plastic arm mount I had it mounted on caused just a tiny amount of constant oscillation.

I'll have to try with a different more solid mount to find out which.

.

here's a typical sub, and close up. so unless I was seeing into a tear in the spacetime continuum where stars have all being replaced by space ducks... we have a vibration problem.

Edited October 3, 2023 by powerlord

[powerlord]

here's 26 mins on the crescent, stacked and processed on mac.

note the sort of faint circular rings - I reckon caused by the L-extreme. Not having had time to do a side by side and compare it with 26 mins with internal dual band, this is not I admit, that useful.

But the weather was not playing ball.

But to get results like this after 26 mins with a bit of kit costing 300 quid is pretty amazing imho.

[powerlord]

56 minutes ago, DaveL59 said:

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.

 

I think folk would still be happy to see saturn like that - you can see the rings. What they do need to do is allow the exposure to be set properly so it doesn't just c;ips things out on planets.

Edited October 3, 2023 by powerlord

[DaveL59]

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 😉 

[Cosmic Geoff]

13 hours ago, powerlord said:

I mean, the whole S50 cost me 300 quid.

How come? That's much less than the RRP, even with the £100 pre-order discount.

[DaveL59]

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 😉 

 

[happy-kat]

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

[powerlord]

2 hours ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

How come? That's much less than the RRP, even with the £100 pre-order discount.

pre=order price was $399 from zwo shipped. at the time that was aboot 300 quid

[powerlord]

49 minutes ago, DaveL59 said:

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 😉 

 

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

[DaveL59]

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.

[DaveL59]

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.

[happy-kat]

glow in the dark need a bright light briefly to charge them, think of child glow in dark stars for ceilings

[LDW1]

Took my SS out in my less than perfect backyard, Bortle 5-6, last nite and gave it a first try on all the old faithfuls, the Dumbell, M31, M33, the Pac Man, etc. all were 12 min. or less. For the price this is and is going to be a fantastic piece of equipment !  Much friendlier than my Dwarf II !  Another sector of this great hobby to try, this morning will be the sun on a bright, clear day.

[DaveL59]

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.

Edited October 4, 2023 by DaveL59

[powerlord]

Huh weird. It can't focus very close for sure. But does about 10m OK, so doubt it's out of range.

I fitted a steel mount now with lens support, so will test next time with my full spectrum a5000 and uvir filter.

It's very smooth for actually just moving the camera around while videoing - that's a 315mm ff equiv on there so quite a reach, and with the app I can very smoothly move it around. And of course Sony has its own remote view.

Edited October 4, 2023 by powerlord

[DaveL59]

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.