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Michael McHale:It will never outperform a quality astrophotography setup, but I still very much enjoy using the Seestar. I shoot for about an hour and do a speed process on the stacked fits file that it produces and it is usually better than I anticipated. My friend, Kai calls it fast food astrophotography, and I think that is spot on. I will take mine with me when I go to dark sites to shoot Milky Way shots and for outreach events. I also run it most nights that I image with my big rigs. I love the little Seestar! * The Seestar will be one of about 4 configurations our club will have at an eclipse demo here on April 8. It will be connected to a large TV for EAA, under a tent or other shelter. I don't think it staying on target will be an issue. However if it is, it only takes a few seconds to refine its view. |
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Thank you Rob and Ed for your responses. I ordered one from Astronomics, and am looking forward to using it soon. I'll probably do a few tests before the big day. I'll be out in Bloomington, Indiana. I hope that you all have clear skies wherever you might be. |
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If I saw the same one, I thought it was over processed/sharpened with too many artifacts for my tastes, but for FB post, it shows that the Seestar can get decent detailed images with some work in post depending on a person's toolset and patience and skill. I'm pleased with the results I've achieved so far. For the money, I think it's quite amazing for what it can achieve as others have noted here. I sometimes wonder, for the money, whether it wouldn't be practical to acquire two or three or four and use them in tandem to 1) acquire mosaic sessions on brighter objects and 2) use them on distant, faint, smaller targets to increase the amount of recorded images per hour of good seeing. For the time being, I might pick up one extra anyway, as I have adapters for 2" narrow band filters and I'm hoping in a year or so, ZWO comes out with a 'big brother' that can do true narrow band and solar imaging with built in filters.This was a recent session with the Seestar S50 on a wedge with 30" exposures for a couple hours. At 30" I've lost some details in the Trapezium and so I think I should incorporate some 10" exposures for that region, similar to how I have to do it with a more traditional setup. Not the best time of year but I have pretty dark skies here in east central Kansas on the outskirts of Lyndon, in Osage County, and the nearest city in the direction is Emporia about 40 miles to the southwest. I edited the resulting stacked image in Photoshop. I'm still trying to think of the best workflow to stack them myself on a Mac without going to the trouble of installing Windows. |
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| I will preface by saying I haven't owned one and will never likely get one for my self (maybe a gift for a astrophotocurious friend or child) .It is important to take everything in context though. The Seestar only costs $500, and often can be had for $400. This thing is incredible for the price it is offered. That's chearper than most modern Cellphones, and still can produce DSO images and some nice solar images. I just love the fact that it will get more people introduced to casual EAA and Astrophotography. |
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Ashraf AbuSara: Is there a particular reason(s) you likely won't get one even though you are impressed with the Seestar? I'm an owner of big sophisticated astrophotography rigs and a Seestar (and Dwarf II) and am loving using them all alongside each other. Cheers, Chris |
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Phil Hoppes: A bit of topic but is there a reason you don't use sites/apps such as NSO's GONG or space weather live? |
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Ashraf AbuSara: I struggle with running multiple rigs simultaneously. I have an entire rig that I have not been using, with an Askar FRA400 / AM5/2600mm pro with a set of 36 mm chroma narrowband and broadband filters that has largely been collecting dust because I have entirely focused on my bigger scope rig. I simply don't have a place and time for it in my imaging sessions and don't need it. But I would have totally bought one if I was starting out. |
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Ashraf AbuSara:Ashraf AbuSara: Thanks. That makes sense in your circumstances Cheers |
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Ashraf AbuSara: Yes, absolute yes, the comparison must be done within the range of cost/benefit that you get with the S50. I would like to add that a few times, going into the wild, I did put my S50 in my backpack and went walking, that you can not do with almost any other rig, except DSLR's and a tripod. So, I had the opportunity to get images on better sky that the one I have in my backyard. Also, I manage to learn how to get quite decent images and some mosaic in the old fashion way, so no problem. After that some PxI+GIMP and the results are decent, most of these images I use for encouraging kids at schools to grow interest in astronomy and related sciences. There is only one other small smart scope on the same range of price that gives you nice images, you can see examples on Cuiv de Lazy Geek plus several applications including the solar eclipse. There are other smart scopes but very expensive and with results that are not that much better than the ones you get with S50, and also, they are heavier to carry...if that is your idea also. Anyway, I believe there is a niche for them, and that is fine, particularly to get more people getting the taste of astronomy, as amateurs, and later, some kids will also be professionals. |
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Phil Hoppes: LOL, sure but what's the fun in that? ;-) |
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IMHO these things and other similar items are good for what they are good for - and nothing more. That is quick and dirty images of brighter stuff. Perhaps for street corner public astronomy or some such endeavor. But using one of these to produce images that are truly post- able on any site that has any number of actually good (or even average ) astro-images present is just silly. It would just be embarrassing. Maybe some folks like "quick and dirty" and they are welcome to it but for me the hobby is all about doing the best possible given my budget and my skills and these gadgets will never be able to do that so count me uninterested. |
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Bill McLaughlin: I find it interesting that you spend the first two paragraphs dissing the S50 as just quick and dirty and posting its photos would be an embarrassment but then in the last paragraph you go on to explain astrophotography is all about doing "the best possible given my budget and skills". So then I am to infer that anybody that has a budget or skills less than you basically post embarrassing images and only people with your skill level and budget should post astrophotography? My first photos were total garbage. I posted them anyway. I've learned a lot from experience astrophotographers on this website and lots of others because a lot of people realize everyone makes garbage to start and it is only through work, experience and good CONSTRUCTIVE criticism that you can learn and improve your craft. I get the S50 is not for you. Fine. You don't have to diss everyone else that uses it or that this is all they can afford but it is beneath you so all they make is quick and dirty junk. I disagree on this point. |
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Phil HoppesFine. You don't have to diss everyone else that uses it or that this is all they can afford but it is beneath you so all they make is quick and dirty junk. I disagree on this point. Point One: I am not dissing the people using the item but rather the item itself. The only sense in which that could be considered a "diss" on the owner of a piece of equipment is that perhaps the individual should have considered other options. Almost all of us, including myself, have made the mistake of going cheap in a hobby that is not often cheap and demands perfection. It seldom ends well. Point Two: The purpose of forums is to get advice from others, especially experienced people. I have been doing astro images for over 30 years starting with film so I think that most would agree that my credentials are at least minimal in that regard. Complementing everything and everyone is friendly but at some point one needs to be frank and tell people what your experience tells you. My experience tells me that simple gadgets like this have limited uses. So feel free to dismiss my opinion, but it still stands. |
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Bill McLaughlin: I think making mistakes is how you learn. Perfection is relative; enjoying what you do should always come first. I don't own such a device, but I see nothing wrong with it as long as it's relatively good quality (which it is, as far as I can tell) and allows you to enjoy and discover astronomy and astrophotography. Obviously, if you enjoy this hobby, you may eventually move to more expensive and precise hardware. But would you have enjoyed starting with a more complicated rig as much? I don't think so... It's all about making progress. The starting point is relatively irrelevant. Also, it's not because someone owns a more "professional" rig that they can no longer enjoy the simplest one. |
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| The area of astronomy, and astrophotography in particular, are a bit larger than posting images on web sites…it's about way more than that. For many it's about seeing something, using a device, that they can't see with just their eyes. Not everybody even wants to capture and save images. They may be entirely content with just seeing the image. The Seestar is an impressive little device that offers many new options/things to many categories of people. It’s a low cost small portable device that can produce pictures in a few minutes with very little knowledge of astro gear or the sky. No one would claim it can compete with more comprehensive backyard astro setups using scopes, mounts, cameras, guide scopes, etc. The majority of us do not have permanent home observatories and the basic setup (carrying gear outside, hooking up all the pieces, alignment, cool down, etc…can easily take 30-60 minutes. The Seestar takes 3 minutes and it's ready to go. The Seestar offers real advantages to kids and senior citizens. Kids tend to be phone based, and that’s about all they need to use the Seestar. For those of us who are older, even carrying heavy gear 30 feet can be a REAL issue. A few years ago I sold my older rig (which was 47 lb, and worked well) for a newer setup that was 15 lb. Getting two days of back aches every time I moved it 30 feet to the porch had reached its limit. I do talks at schools about astro things. Take a Seestar to a middle school, and a 3,000$ scope, and see which they crowd around after it's over. I think the Seestar is the wave of the future of many aspects of home astronomy. The combination of robotics and automation offers choices we didn't have even 2 years ago. It will likely affect much of the gear we will use in the coming years and decades. Many of us use ZWO cameras, but it's easy to forget that their first camera was only 13 years ago. Modern mounts offer integrated cameras for alignment and can track amazingly well even without guiding. I think there is a lot more of that kind of thing in our future. |
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Interesting conversation based on the first post, regarding what the Seestar can or cannot do. I posted some of my images from the Seestar on both facebook and here, there are also ones that I didn't, because they failed. The original conversation is about how the seestar doesn't blow out the core of the Orion nebula. Well, it's taking 10 second exposures, perhaps people can learn from it, how long of an exposure needed for brighter nebula, I recently used it during the eclipse , but I could only get images before and after the partial eclipse we had in CT. Right now I can't really find any worthwhile targets to use it on, maybe on reflection nebula, but that would need a lot of sessions to get something out of it, and the galaxies are rather small, although I do have some images of the Leo Triplet and part of the Markarian's chain. My favorite image from it is my 50 minute on the Monkey head nebula, that I did several month ago. https://astrob.in/ykoflf/0/ not very successful Rosette mosaic https://astrob.in/e1p2c4/0/ Jellyfish Nebula- lacks enough subs https://astrob.in/bstt3q/0/ |
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Hi, I believe that as M42 is the topic, yes, the short exposures are vital, I took a quick one of M42, that is in astrobin, not bad for being just a fast processing, except for one thing, the Bayer mask on S50 is not the conventional one, so I got the wrong colours...it is GRBG not RGGB, also my first shot at the moon, when processing mineral moon I got the blue-brownish colours also "inverted", but after you set up the right colours everything is fine. Regarding M42, the second time I did a mosaic, which was quite nice, and, this time, with the colours that are closer to the correct ones. Assuming that in AP there is a room for personal taste in colours and processing. In the past, I played with colours on a NB image of a quite well known cluster with nebulosity, to my own palette, and it turned out a quite interesting image. Since the S50 has a kind of NB filter, also in those images I did play separating channels and, getting increased certain colours, then recomposing the image. So it is worth to mention the use of this NB filter that comes with the S50. Now, I did a kind of analysis on what is good for and, I published somewhere else, pictures of the Sun, Moon, M42 and Rosetta, plus a number of open clusters, M46, M47, NGC 2301 y NGC 2360. Particularly on M46 you can see the planetary nebula NGC 2438, with its clear donuts shape. Why I did that?, exactly for the reason @Ed Dixon was saying, astronomy for kids and general public, that is not likely to buy a gear, or even, they can not afford to buy a gear of any kind. It is amazing the reaction when they can have an image of the Sun or the Moon, and so on. So, out of the box, as was already said, bright object like M42 are fine, with a bit more work, going now for learning processing techniques, a bunch of other objects come as interesting ones as well. I am using for the S50 only free softwares, like GIMP, I should also try Siril, I have seen quite nice images using post processing S50 images using Siril. We have to consider that more of these devices are coming into the market, including an electronic Eyepiece, by Pegassus, which will "integrate photons" enhancing what you get from your scope, also controlled by your phone. So, another step to help people that want astronomy or basic AP without having a full gear on their own. |
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| It is important to have beginners and all post to a site like and to contribute money to it in in order to have a place for more advanced amateurs with better equipment and other obviously professional astronomers post the pics they do post. It's also a site to get suggestions on how to do photography better. |
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I think the potential of the Seestar is really underestimated, because people think of it as a toy. I have made some images of it with different targets as comets and DSO and i'm very satisfied with performance. Latest i do a long time image session of M13 and do some experiments with BXT and later with 3x drizzling and BXT in PixInsight. First a cropped field of 5,5h (10s exposures over night) with the Seestar (no modifications), processed in Pix and BXT: https://www.astrobin.com/rnpwqx/ I have further tried to use 3x drizzling AND BXT. Left image is BXT and drizzling, right image is BXT without drizzling. That works very well, because the Seestar is in undersampling with a large field and a small sensor.  So for good images with the Seestar long exposing is essential as with ANY other equipment. With BXT and even drizzling in Pix you can use the full potential of it. But i have done many processing in Siril only, for which i deleveloped an automatic script, which does stacking and development. |
