ZWO Seestar 50

[paulastro]

Went out last evening to try the Seestar in poor conditions to see what it would come up with.  The Moon was 98% illuminated.

The pics and exposures are M42 19mts, Horsehead Neb 14mts, and the Flaming Star Neb .7mts.  The exposures were all shorter than I intended due to clouds, it was -1 deg C with an icy haze, particularly low down.  I did a little processing of all of them with my phones camera software except the Moon which was caught as it went into a cloud bank at the end of my session.

It should perform very impressively in a dark sky.

 

 

[Geoff Lister]

4 hours ago, GasGiant said:

Specifically, anyone using Samsung tablets ?

Yes, but The Seestar requires Android V8, or later, and my (old) Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 runs Android V7, so it will not even load the Seestar app. It will run the Dwarf II app, but that, I believe, works with V5 onwards. I now have a Blackview Tab 60, running Android V13, and that works well with both 'scopes.

Geoff

[M40]

4 hours ago, GasGiant said:

Guys,  what Tablets are you using with your seestar?  Specifically, anyone using Samsung tablets ?

Im looking at getting a new tablet as my old samsung wont download the software. Im presuming newer Samsung will no problem

I use a galaxy tab s8+ and all good on that. I don't tend to use it for the seestar as portrait mode I find becomes unwieldy so I stick with the phone.

[Neil H]

Hi I have software on my Tab 7 lite

[DaveL59]

2 hours ago, M40 said:

I use a galaxy tab s8+ and all good on that. I don't tend to use it for the seestar as portrait mode I find becomes unwieldy so I stick with the phone.

Yeah I find portrait works better on the Lenovo P11 too even tho they've improved its handling of landscape mode (or PC mode as the Lenovo setup calls it). On a large tablet that does make it a bit of a pain to use tho I do appreciate the increased realestate overall.

[GasGiant]

Just went out and bought a Galaxy Tab S9 and it's all sweet and dandy with the S50 software. I will enjoy the much larger screen than is on my phone.

[LDW1]

I use my ipad 8th gen but I also really like my Samsung Tab A8 tablet with my SS, it works perfectly especially in Landscape mode !  I would recommend the Tab A8 anytime for the price.

Edited February 25 by LDW1

[Bazz]

Quick question. What is an affordable power bank for the Seestar S50?

[Geoff Lister]

If I think that I am going to have a long session, I use a little power bank for mobile phones/tablets. I bought it fron "The Range" about a year ago for £14.99. It has 5V 2A and 5V 1A, USB A outputs, and a 5V 2A micro-USB input. It is rated at 20,000 mAH (probably @ battery voltage of 3,7V), so 10Ah @ 5v would be more realistic. It should easily double the length of a session. A quick google shows similar devices, although prices seem to have risen somewhat.

Pages 44 & 45 of this topic (Jan 13th onwards) discuss the charging of the S50 and its use of external power at low ambient temperatures.

Geoff

[Cosmic Geoff]

13 hours ago, Bazz said:

Quick question. What is an affordable power bank for the Seestar S50?

You should not need one unless you are running a long session with the dew heater on.  I once did not recharge it between sessions, it signalled low battery, so I found my Celestron LiFePo power tank (not a cheap option 🙂) and connected its USB output using the Seestar supplied cable.

  If you want something cheap, a smartphone power tank (which many people will have already) or some other battery pack with a USB output should work. I am sure the choice is wide...

[LDW1]

When the internal battery gets down to 20-21% you get a warning that the battery is low, when it gets to 15-18% you get a message that the battery does not have enough power to operate the SS and it quits working / enhancing but it does not shut down, you decide to either charge it up at that point or shut it down completely or ......... !  The other nite in -17° C temps mine did that at 18%.

[Carbon Brush]

Lithium battery performance does vary between manufacturers and models. The table below is taken from data poduced by samsung for one of their cell types.
may be useful for reference.

[squipper]

only did 20 minutes till the clouds came in

[Pixies]

A bit hazy but managed an hour before the moon starts to spoil the party.

[irandar]

Hi folks, Would someone like to send me some avi video files from Seestar for me to practice on. About 3 GB worth would be fine. I am waiting for my Seestar. Thanks and regards, Irving

[M40]

Only one I have as I tend to just do screen grabs, hopefully it has worked and with luck someone will be along soon with a better one for you.

Edited February 29 by M40

[GasGiant]

At last !!! A break in the weather!

 

Edited March 2 by GasGiant

[Cosmic Geoff]

Had a go with the Seestar on a cool and slightly hazy night (3 March).

M109 turned out well this time, likewise M108.  I wanted to find comet Kushida 144P, but unlike 12P/Pons-Brooks it is not in the Tonight's best list.   I found a Search box at the top of the screen and found that if you tap there twice a keyboard appears.  I entered Ku- found the comet and spent a few minutes trying to image comet 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu  (note the subtle error).

It appears that the searchable database of comets and other objects is very large.  147P/K exists but is unobservable.

Tried again for 144P . The starfield kept sliding downwards on the screen, and when it stopped doing that no faint fuzzy showed on screen after 2 minutes.

I gave up and tried for comet 62P/Tsushinchan.  Better luck here - quickly detected a fuzzy and got an image of it (28 mins).   This comet is reportedly about as bright as 144P.

That search box is useful, but we could really do with a proper Seestar user manual!

[Geoff Lister]

54 minutes ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

but we could really do with a proper Seestar user manual!

+1.  The nice new functions in the App need documentation.

I tend to use Stellarium to search for a target and get an idea if it is likely to be above trees/houses/fences etc., then home in using the Seestar sky map. Using that method has got me 144P.

Geoff

[LaurenceT]

I've been thinking about getting one of these for a little while and I've been watching many YT videos. I've also joined a couple of Facebook user groups to read more. I've been aware of the problem of field rotation and had read in many reviews that because of this integration time of over an hour was not recommended.

Yesterday I saw a Facebook post claiming 2.5 hours of integration time without field rotation. When I commented about field rotation I received these replies:

"Seestar uses a Plate Solution to align and register the stars. Once aligned it adds the result to the stack. At least that is my understanding and it seems to work well over the 2 or 3 hour time span"

 "The SeeStar will automatically align the rotation of each image as it is stacked. The outcome will have a fully register object but the outside edges of the image will show skewing. It is more apparent when using the individual images and stacking them on a computer."

Is this now the experience of other users?

Anyway, I ordered one yesterday (not based on this information), hopefully will arrive tomorrow. 

[Elp]

If you register and stack the individual images on a computer afterwards you definitely shouldn't see field rotation as it's no different from "normal AP", I would have thought the in built stacking works the same but a user can confirm this.

[LaurenceT]

1 minute ago, Elp said:

If you register and stack the individual images on a computer afterwards you definitely shouldn't see field rotation as it's no different from "normal AP", I would have thought the in built stacking works the same but a user can confirm this.

I would have thought that the fact it is an alt az mount is the biggest factor in it's field rotation which makes it different from 'normal AP' which is done with an EQ mount.

The Facebook comments seemed to suggest that ZWO have introduced something into the firmware which corrects for this.

[happy-kat]

The orientation of the S50 is portrait and exposure length short individual frames wouldn't show field rotation that obvious though target direction influenced. A stack would through I expect from first to last frame. If you had 300 frames and stacked just one every 50 frames you might see the rotation by the way the frame edges where outlined on the stack

[LaurenceT]

7 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

The orientation of the S50 is portrait and exposure length short individual frames wouldn't show field rotation that obvious though target direction influenced. A stack would through I expect from first to last frame. If you had 300 frames and stacked just one every 50 frames you might see the rotation by the way the frame edges where outlined on the stack

Thanks, so would a single unstacked exposure of 2.5 hours show field rotation?

[Cosmic Geoff]

As a Seestar owner/user, I can point out that while having an altazimuth mount should cause field rotation to be apparent on longer exposures, one finds that on some exposures field exposure is indeed apparent, shown by wedge effects at the edges of the frame, but on other exposures the field rotation is not apparent. 

I don't know why, but I suspect that the Seestar software tries to disguise it for the smartphone images, and the degree of success may depend on sky transparency remaining the same throughout the exposure.