ZWO Seestar 50

[M40]

So it's here, I suggest you watch the Cuiv youtube video so you know it's initially going to speak Chinese and where to look for the reset button etc but it is very straight forward. 

Obviously you have to play, so straight out in the sun to use the solar film.... and it initially failed to find the sun after going through a calibration routine which was simply manually picking it up and turning it until ready. I then used the Cuiv method of using a shadow to get it roughly lined up, tried again, it wanted me to go through a leveling routine, then it auto found the Sun. Quick auto focus, a single screenshot, no knowledge or ability and bingo, I have my very first picture of a sunspot. Big grin time 😁

 

On charge now, sorry about the clouds

 

Edited September 8, 2023 by M40
Speling

[DaveL59]

Nice 🙂

I'll have a much longer wait given I only ordered one recently, but it'd have been hard to resist snapping the sun since it can. Good to prove its working and get some testing time in daylight after all, I did the same when I got the EQ5 SynScan, much easier than fumbling about in the dark. Hope you get some clear-ish nights to give it a test run against the stars too.

[Louis D]

A couple of quick questions:

• What is the pixel resolution on each axis of the imaging chip?
• Any idea what's going on with all of the scatter in the solar image?
  • Do you think it is due to the solar filter, objective, or lack of internal stray light control?

[Elp]

Probably dusty or cloudy atomosphere. White light should be pin sharp.

The one question which I'm still waiting for confirmation, does it auto align just by placing it level on the tripod without having to orient it north.

[M40]

35 minutes ago, Louis D said:

A couple of quick questions:

• What is the pixel resolution on each axis of the imaging chip?
• Any idea what's going on with all of the scatter in the solar image?
  • Do you think it is due to the solar filter, objective, or lack of internal stray light control?

Pixel resolution - I believe that it is based on the zwo asi462mc chip

Scatter - not sure what that is as it's the first solar image I have taken and it was a simple screen grab and crop from the phone with no stacking or processing.

[M40]

18 minutes ago, Elp said:

Probably dusty or cloudy atomosphere. White light should be pin sharp.

The one question which I'm still waiting for confirmation, does it auto align just by placing it level on the tripod without having to orient it north.

Certainly cloudy when I took the picture. The calibration stuff I have had to do so far when the app told me to was.....

Pick the whole up and rotate until a green circle was complete

Level the whole by adjusting the legs. The app shows two circles, initially white, and by adjusting the legs, the two circles overlap and turn green when levelled. They give a value and I managed to get a value of 0.8 which it seemed happy with. After that it auto aligned with no.North alignment required.

[M40]

When it was out of the box, it showed a battery level of three bars, this quickly dropped to two and stayed there while I was playing. When I started charging it was showing 1.5 bars and took just under three hours to fully charge.

[LDW1]

1 hour ago, Louis D said:

A couple of quick questions:

• What is the pixel resolution on each axis of the imaging chip?
• Any idea what's going on with all of the scatter in the solar image?
  • Do you think it is due to the solar filter, objective, or lack of internal stray light control?

Who exactly are these comments directed to, which beginer in the learning curve do you expect answers from and for what in this new devise ??

[LDW1]

29 minutes ago, M40 said:

Pixel resolution - I believe that it is based on the zwo asi462mc chip

Scatter - not sure what that is as it's the first solar image I have taken and it was a simple screen grab and crop from the phone with no stacking or processing.

Don't take those queries too serious, how could anyone !  Just to confuse maybe ?

[LDW1]

25 minutes ago, M40 said:

Certainly cloudy when I took the picture. The calibration stuff I have had to do so far when the app told me to was.....

Pick the whole up and rotate until a green circle was complete

Level the whole by adjusting the legs. The app shows two circles, initially white, and by adjusting the legs, the two circles overlap and turn green when levelled. They give a value and I managed to get a value of 0.8 which it seemed happy with. After that it auto aligned with no.North alignment required.

So far it sounds a lot easier than the D2.

[M40]

1 minute ago, LDW1 said:

So far it sounds a lot easier than the D2.

I got it up and running very quickly and as with most of us to date, the only knowledge being a few youtube videos. Very happy so far in just achieving one simple solar picture. One thing I found out very quickly is that I could hardly see the mobile because of the sun, so leaving the ss50 outside I continued to use it from inside house so I  know it has a range of at least 5 meters. This is likely not it's max range as that was not what I was trying to do so never looked at that.

[LDW1]

6 minutes ago, M40 said:

I got it up and running very quickly and as with most of us to date, the only knowledge being a few youtube videos. Very happy so far in just achieving one simple solar picture. One thing I found out very quickly is that I could hardly see the mobile because of the sun, so leaving the ss50 outside I continued to use it from inside house so I  know it has a range of at least 5 meters. This is likely not it's max range as that was not what I was trying to do so never looked at that.

A great part of a new world of ameteur astronomy, another lease on the astronomical  life chain and all for very few $'s !  As Louis Armstrong once sang ' Its a wonderful world ', lol !

[M40]

100% cloud cover tonight, should have guessed 🤣

[Louis D]

9 hours ago, M40 said:

Scatter - not sure what that is as it's the first solar image I have taken and it was a simple screen grab and crop from the phone with no stacking or processing.

Stray light lightening what should be a more or less black background.  It's that orange glow around the sun in your image.

9 hours ago, M40 said:

Certainly cloudy when I took the picture.

Aha!  It was clouds scattering sunlight.  That would explain it.

Here's an image I snapped of the sun through my RACI finderscope with a front solar filter on a partly cloudy day.  Sunlight scatter is pretty obvious throughout the frame.

[M40]

Adding to the info...

The ss50 does have an internal dew heater selectable from the app

On scenery, I focused down to about 30 meters.

There is a basic tutorial within the app and you can download and access the app without it being connected to the ss50. There is a very useful video for beginners within tutorial section that is well worth a watch.

The ss50 sound can be muted from the app, this will be quite useful at night during auto focus

I have an azgti to heq5 tripod adapter, this can be used to mount the ss50 to the heq5 tripod. 

The two week cloud curse is working overtime, my apologies. I expected clouds at night but as I now can take solar pictures, its 100% clouds during day now. I am wondering if I take a few scenery pictures, will it start raining? 🤔 🤦‍♂️

[DaveL59]

Handy to know re the app, I wonder if its available on google play yet as I didn't see it last I looked?

I was also thinking to get a EQ5 plate adaptor to mount it onto one of my taller tripods, would help with the fences in my small garden so will go look at that idea again 🙂 

edit - OK looking about, seems its not yet on the play store but download and installed it on the Lenovo P11 tablet from ZWO directly.

Wondering if this'd fit OK on the EQ5 tripods I have, being the older versions

Edited September 9, 2023 by DaveL59

[M40]

That's the one that I have, maybe worth a quick line to flo to confirm it fits the eq5 tripod? 

I downloaded the app from Google play store, have a check in case your app needs updating.

[LDW1]

They state a few times on the SS50 group site to use it on AZ only but what do they know !  Good Luck !

[DaveL59]

we're using the taller tripod that the EQ5 or other mount goes on, not attaching it to the mount and making it EQ.

[Elp]

It has been stated in Cuivs latest video that it doesn't operate in EQ mode and never will be updated to. Their reference was to using a bigger tripod.

Edited September 10, 2023 by Elp

[M40]

Getting home quite late last night and slightly the worse for wear, I saw a gap in the clouds and thought why not.

Plonked it on the patio table, connected, no levelling, no calibration, no North alignment, lots of cloud cover so much so that I could just about see Jupiter through the mess, selected M31 and got this.....

24 x 10 second shots with no processing and a just a simple screen grab. I limited it to 4 minutes as it was just getting too cloudy. I have never taken a shot of M31 before as I do not have anything like a widefield setup so more than happy with this. 

One thing I did notice was the alignment of the sensor, the app did not appear to rotate but that could well have been user error, but the alignment of the sensor seems to line up with a mobile phone screen. Sooner or later I will try it on the tablet to see if it changes but you have to pat the people at ZWO on the back, this is a very clever and easy to use device 👌

 

[saac]

Not bad at all.

Jim 

[Stonecutter]

Got mine Friday.

Immediately did the solar shot, very pleased my first one ever.  Then last night Sat, put unit on very high 168 cm fibre tripod levelled it and took 30 mins of 10 secs exposures ( not sure how many were stacked as intermittent clouds.)

Exeter Bottle 5 back garden lots of high trees ( hence tripod and stone bag to weigh it down ).

Watching the result come in as stack built was very exciting, I normally go for standard 180secs exposures on ZWO MC533C.  Clouds came in, bought inside.  So light and easy takes seconds.  Set up is at most a minute. ( See Ciuv or ZWO setup videos ).

I intend to use it when I go camping in van mainly in Dark skies of coastal Cornwall and to show grandkids when we all go camping.  I am amazed at the value.

This morning took fit file ( only has original stacked and stacked fit file ), of the North American nebula Cynus Wall into Siril for quick edit, then into noise reduction software for the final result.....

 

 

 

Edited September 10, 2023 by Stonecutter
added location data

[Stonecutter]

Additional Info.

1.  No polar alignment.

2.  Used App on iOS and selected best tonight from my location.

3.  Choose NGC7000 and select go to....then I moved the Red View box on screen to wall region and selected GoTo which it did

4.  no exposure settings, it just does a couple darks then 10secs exposures

5.  It has a light pollution filter built in and auto selects it for nebulae etc and your location I assume

6.  Battery life ( 30 mins took it to 89%), no dew heater selected ( option in app )

7.  Since I had last used for solar it was at infinity focus but you can just press screen ( like most phone photo apps ) and refocus.

8.  first couple of stacked images dark but gradually colour comes in.

9. Stacked image is small around 400K and saved to ( in my case Photos app on iPhone ).

10.  Connect unit to computer USB turn on and it appears as drive, enter my works folder and there are two files the 400K auto stacked image in jpg format and a 12Mb FIT format file which I transferred.

11.  Photmetric calibration in Siril worked on image first time, says 250mm Telescope 2.90 pixels.

 

Hope that helps.

[LDW1]

31 minutes ago, Stonecutter said:

Got mine Friday.

Immediately did the solar shot, very pleased my first one ever.  Then last night Sat, put unit on very high 168 cm fibre tripod levelled it and took 30 mins of 10 secs exposures ( not sure how many were stacked as intermittent clouds.)

Exeter Bottle 5 back garden lots of high trees ( hence tripod and stone bag to weigh it down ).

Watching the result come in as stack built was very exciting, I normally go for standard 180secs exposures on ZWO MC533C.  Clouds came in, bought inside.  So light and easy takes seconds.  Set up is at most a minute. ( See Ciuv or ZWO setup videos ).

I intend to use it when I go camping in van mainly in Dark skies of coastal Cornwall and to show grandkids when we all go camping.  I am amazed at the value.

This morning took fit file ( only has original stacked and stacked fit file ), of the North American nebula Cynus Wall into Siril for quick edit, then into noise reduction software for the final result.....

 

 

 

So can't you post the original image along side this doctored up one as a before and after, as a comparison for the benefit of all the new beginers ?