ZWO Seestar 50

[powerlord]

yup, thats the 3 star calibration by a dumbed down name.

And tonight I got it working in EQ mode! I stuck a wee red dot on it, aligned with polaris, then manually moved to approx position of capella. I then pressed the start photo button. It then did the 3 star calibration ok. I then did a goto to capella, and this time it worked!

I then went to IC405 which was fine. Shot 30 mins and it all stacked nice with no rotation, and I'm now on M33 and will leave it there till it clouds up or battery dies.

Obviously lots of gotchas to EQ mode what with the limited DEC rotation, but it's still a bit of a game changer imho. With rotation on long integration really reducing your resolution to 1MP (i.e. centre square). Now you can double it back to the original 2MP. Hopefully I'll get a reasonable amount of time on M33.

I'll post the pics tomorrow.

 

Edited January 16 by powerlord

[DaveL59]

31 minutes ago, powerlord said:

yup, thats the 3 star calibration by a dumbed down name.

And tonight I got it working in EQ mode! I stuck a wee red dot on it, aligned with polaris, then manually moved to approx position of capella. I then pressed the start photo button. It then did the 3 star calibration ok. I then did a goto to capella, and this time it worked!

I then went to IC405 which was fine. Shot 30 mins and it all stacked nice with no rotation, and I'm now on M33 and will leave it there till it clouds up or battery dies.

Obviously lots of gotchas to EQ mode what with the limited DEC rotation, but it's still a bit of a game changer imho. With rotation on long integration really reducing your resolution to 1MP (i.e. centre square). Now you can double it back to the original 2MP. Hopefully I'll get a reasonable amount of time on M33.

I'll post the pics tomorrow.

 

Out of interest, how have you got it set up for EQ (mounted)?

I guess I could park one of the EQ5's so its static if I can get it mounted onto that, just a bit more faff to set it all up over using a simple level tripod setup.

[powerlord]

I just used one of the wedges I have for my azgtis. You probably do need a wedge if you don't have one.

 

stu

[powerlord]

Now, I reckon .. For what it is..that's bloody brilliant. Jupiter clearly visible, and the moons.

That's the phone local version of the video.

 

[Giles_B]

Amazing detail - will you reprocess the image?

Do you put the quality down to great seeing, or did you use some other trick?

[powerlord]

Nope, I think it's just got better at allowing you to adjust the exposure for planetary. I tried processing the raw, but it really is just a handfull of pixels so not much more to gain there.

Oh, and this one I think deserved its own thread

With EQ mode I really think its in a league of it's own now for the money!

 

[PeterCPC]

Has anyone found a lens hood that would fit the seestar?

[nicoscy]

This and this.

[powerlord]

any 48mm extension works fine. or a bog roll. I kid you not - fits a treat.

[PeterCPC]

On another point - has anyone tried the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Equatorial Wedge on a tripod to turn the seestar into EQ?

[Elp]

15 minutes ago, PeterCPC said:

On another point - has anyone tried the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Equatorial Wedge on a tripod to turn the seestar into EQ?

Not for this application, but for my azgti imaging rig. It's not the best as it has a sloppy mechanical mechanism making PA a bit of a chore. The best is the WO one, followed by the ioptron one.

[powerlord]

1 hour ago, PeterCPC said:

On another point - has anyone tried the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Equatorial Wedge on a tripod to turn the seestar into EQ?

 

[Geoff Lister]

I finished a Seestar & Dwarf II session at dawn this morning. There was a significant frost, probablt about -5 deg C. I brought in both devices into my conservatory (about +5 deg C). With about 50% power remaining I connected the SS to a plug-top 5V supply. 2 bars illuminated, but no flashing. I turned off the plug-top and powered up the SS - 2 bars illuminated. I turned on the plug-top and got the nice female voice indicating Temperature too low - charging suspended. So I powered down, brought the SS indoors, and placed the SS close to a domestic radiator for a bit of a warm up. After a short warm up, and back in the conservatory, the SS was happy to charge, with 1 bar illuminated and the next flashing.

Using another plug-top, the Dwarf II had started to charge, straight from freezing, so no low-temperature charging inhibit here.

Geoff

[DaveL59]

Kinda nice to know they've thought about battery protection then, perhaps will mean it'll last a bit longer before we need replacements 🙂 

[FLO]

22 hours ago, PeterCPC said:

Has anyone found a lens hood that would fit the seestar?

 

21 hours ago, nicoscy said:

This and this.

And now, this 🙂 

[powerlord]

42 minutes ago, DaveL59 said:

Kinda nice to know they've thought about battery protection then, perhaps will mean it'll last a bit longer before we need replacements 🙂 

yeh, when mine was out tuesday night, when it got to about 40% I plugged a powerbank in so it would image all night - and the power icon turned blue with a temp icon - and the charge didn't go up again. however neither did it go down - so it obviously just started drawing power from the powerbank in preference to the internal, until that had drained, then switched to internal. So all good.

Yup, nice they though about it - it shows the sort of primary use case being designed for. Whereas the dwarf was never really mainly about astro so I imagine it just wasn't something they even considered.

[DaveL59]

13 minutes ago, FLO said:

 

And now, this 🙂 

Almost looks like it needs a big spanner to fit it 😉 

[FLO]

4 hours ago, DaveL59 said:

Almost looks like it needs a big spanner to fit it 😉 

The shape prevents it rolling off the table in the dark 🙂 

[PeterCPC]

18 hours ago, powerlord said:

 

Looked on the Seestar Forum and they don't recommend using it at an angle as it can cause undue wear on the gears.

[doublevodka]

3 hours ago, Geoff Lister said:

I finished a Seestar & Dwarf II session at dawn this morning. There was a significant frost, probablt about -5 deg C. I brought in both devices into my conservatory (about +5 deg C). With about 50% power remaining I connected the SS to a plug-top 5V supply. 2 bars illuminated, but no flashing. I turned off the plug-top and powered up the SS - 2 bars illuminated. I turned on the plug-top and got the nice female voice indicating Temperature too low - charging suspended. So I powered down, brought the SS indoors, and placed the SS close to a domestic radiator for a bit of a warm up. After a short warm up, and back in the conservatory, the SS was happy to charge, with 1 bar illuminated and the next flashing.

Using another plug-top, the Dwarf II had started to charge, straight from freezing, so no low-temperature charging inhibit here.

Geoff

Have seen a few posts of people wrapping a dew band around the bottom of the device while in use in cold temps, seems to help so maybe work a look for a cheap usb one that can be run from a powerbank?

12 minutes ago, PeterCPC said:

Looked on the Seestar Forum and they don't recommend using it at an angle as it can cause undue wear on the gears.

Have read on the official group on Facebook that ZWO say no issues with the gears, but they don't recommend it due to the risk of toppling @powerlord thread above on the Rosette is quite informative 👍

[PeterCPC]

This is what it says on the Forum:

There is a certain risk of falling when using the Seestar in a tilted state. At the same time, the internal motor will be unevenly stressed, which will accelerate the aging of the equipment.

[powerlord]

yeh some bloke managed to open it up though, and there are nice bearing on each axis, plus it really doesn't weigh much. As for toppling, you can do what I did (see pics above) and just offset it so the balance is still centered.

At the end of the day with any of these mods, you're either happy to give it a go or not - each to thier own. 😄

[Geoff Lister]

1 hour ago, doublevodka said:

Have seen a few posts of people wrapping a dew band around the bottom of the device while in use in cold temps, seems to help so maybe work a look for a cheap usb one that can be run from a powerbank?

 

I found that about 15 minutes near a warm radiator was enough to get it charging.

[Geoff Lister]

On 17/01/2024 at 12:18, powerlord said:

any 48mm extension works fine. or a bog roll. I kid you not - fits a treat.

I spent some time measuring the outside diameters of cardboard tubes from a range of bog rolls, from different manufacturers, and they were all in the range 37 to 45mm. I did find a longer (70cm) cardboard tube, probably from present wrapping paper, and this was a comfortable fit. This should give me a few spares for when I select shutdown with it in place. 😬

[Carbon Brush]

Compass calibration. I was probably asked to do this when the scope was unpacked, but don't recall being asked since then until now.....

Last night I was asked to calibrate the compass, which I did following the procedure on the tablet screen. The scope was on a flat top wall so rotation was easy.
Moved to the first couple of targets without problem.
When asking for another target, not moving the scope, I got the compass calibration message again.
So I complied and then there were issues locating the target.
As I was on limited time, I packed up.

Today I planted the scope on the wall again, asked for solar, and was asked for a compass calibration - yet again.

There are possibilies here. A daft user. A clever scope that has detected other issues but not bothered to tell me. Or a faulty scope compass.
Any thoughts?