While I have been using the Seestar S50 since it's release as my travel and easy setup telescope, and it has produced lot's of great images. But it's not without it's faults. In the 4 years since it's released, ZWO has put out 3 more Smart Telescopes, but sadly, their Field of View is always wider, in some cases way wider than the S50.
So I have been eyeing the Dwarf Mini for about a year now, doing research and learning about it. When during Amazon Prime Days they had it discounted almost $100, so it was down to just over $300 I finally pulled the trigger. That was about 3 or 4 weeks ago, and I just finally last night got time to set it up for the first time.
The one knock that I have seen with Dwarflabs App, is it's a bit hard to use and it takes a lot of poking and prodding to find what you need. Like in this case, EQ mode. With the Seestars, you just click on the Smart Telescope in the App and all of the main, basics setting like EQ mode are there and you just toggle it on. With the Dwarf App, it took me almost 15 minutes to find how to turn on EQ mode, and that was after searching on Google, watching a couple of video's. To get EQ mode turned on was not intuitive in any way sadly. But I found it.
Now the good news was, once I found it, it immediately calibrated and was ready to shoot! So that part was easy. I just hope I can find the EQ mode faster next time.
Even though this was my first time using the Mini, and wasn't familiar really with the App, I took the bull by the horns, and besides skipping Alt/Az mode and going straight to EQ mode, I also set it for 60 second subs. With the Seestar S50, 20 second subs is the most that it will reliably do without dropping a lot of frames. In this case with the Dwarf Mini, setting it for 60 seconds, it literally didn't drop a single frame! So that was incredible. You also have access to the Gain setting, but I left that at the default setting of 60 Gain. As that's where it gives the best quality.
I ran it for almost 3 hours before the battery died. I should have connected an external battery, but I wanted to see battery life on it. It's supposed to get 4 hours, so 3 hours was a bit dissappointing, but perhaps after being drained and getting a complete new charge, I can hit the 4 hour mark. Normally, it would be connected to an external battery to run all night, but it's nice to benchmark things like battery life just so I know.
One of the things I really missed was while imaging and watching the Live stack grow, I think the Seestars stretch the stack as it goes, so the Live view of it stacking does look way better then on the Dwarf Mini. Also, a cool feature that the Seestar App gives you is while imaging you can do some basic edits, like you can run it through a Noise Reduction, add some contrast, etc to a stacked image, while it's still capturing images. That's an awesome way to get a quick view of how your capture is really looking. You can save that edit too, which makes it great if you want to pester your other late night astro friends which what you are capturing.
With the Dwarflabs App, it looks like all you can do is after you are completely done you can send it to a Cloud based processor they have called Stellar Studios. And it can do Noise Reduction, star correction and a couple of other things. But even though I have read and been aware of Stellar Studios for a long time, I never realized it had only like 5 options. I had just assumed with the way people talked about it, that it would be much more feature packed.
The other thing I was disappointed in with Stellar Studio, was the image you edited, can't be saved back to the Dwarf Mini. The only way to get the fit file of the edit is you have to copy a link they provide (using this on your phone), and then you have to email yourself this link, then open the email on your computer and then you can download the edited fit file. It's just 1 fit file, if I can upload it to the Cloud, the Cloud should be able to download it back to the Dwarf Mini, without having to jump through all of these hoops to get it.
But, like anything new, I think we are always biased to what we knew before. Dwarflabs doesn't add as many new features as ZWO does with the Seestars, but Dwarflabs is also working on adding new features making sure capability wise it keeps up with the Seestars. So hopefully some of these things will be added or cleaned up in the App.
(I didn't think I was writing all of this)
So I took that fit file of IC 405 and took the Stellar Studios edit and ran it through the new Astro editing program called AstroWizard by Lukomatico. So many people are raving about it, so I thought I would give it a try to process the image. And I have to say it did a pretty decent job. Especially for people new into Astrophotography, it's a great way for them to process their images. I am used to Pixinsight, so I am used to more bells and whistles, but AstroWizard did do a very nice job, and I like how Luke set it up, that there is no real guesswork, it's a Step by Step process, so it starts you at Step 1, you make a few choices, then you go to Step 2, again make some choices, etc, until the end.
I then took that final image into Photoshop so I could do a little more hands on editing, and what you see here is the final result.
I am thinking not bad for a first run at the Dwarflabs Mini. If you want a tiny run around Smart Telescope that won't break the bank, this is it for you.
168 Lights @ 60 seconds
All comments are welcome,
Jim
So I have been eyeing the Dwarf Mini for about a year now, doing research and learning about it. When during Amazon Prime Days they had it discounted almost $100, so it was down to just over $300 I finally pulled the trigger. That was about 3 or 4 weeks ago, and I just finally last night got time to set it up for the first time.
The one knock that I have seen with Dwarflabs App, is it's a bit hard to use and it takes a lot of poking and prodding to find what you need. Like in this case, EQ mode. With the Seestars, you just click on the Smart Telescope in the App and all of the main, basics setting like EQ mode are there and you just toggle it on. With the Dwarf App, it took me almost 15 minutes to find how to turn on EQ mode, and that was after searching on Google, watching a couple of video's. To get EQ mode turned on was not intuitive in any way sadly. But I found it.
Now the good news was, once I found it, it immediately calibrated and was ready to shoot! So that part was easy. I just hope I can find the EQ mode faster next time.
Even though this was my first time using the Mini, and wasn't familiar really with the App, I took the bull by the horns, and besides skipping Alt/Az mode and going straight to EQ mode, I also set it for 60 second subs. With the Seestar S50, 20 second subs is the most that it will reliably do without dropping a lot of frames. In this case with the Dwarf Mini, setting it for 60 seconds, it literally didn't drop a single frame! So that was incredible. You also have access to the Gain setting, but I left that at the default setting of 60 Gain. As that's where it gives the best quality.
I ran it for almost 3 hours before the battery died. I should have connected an external battery, but I wanted to see battery life on it. It's supposed to get 4 hours, so 3 hours was a bit dissappointing, but perhaps after being drained and getting a complete new charge, I can hit the 4 hour mark. Normally, it would be connected to an external battery to run all night, but it's nice to benchmark things like battery life just so I know.
One of the things I really missed was while imaging and watching the Live stack grow, I think the Seestars stretch the stack as it goes, so the Live view of it stacking does look way better then on the Dwarf Mini. Also, a cool feature that the Seestar App gives you is while imaging you can do some basic edits, like you can run it through a Noise Reduction, add some contrast, etc to a stacked image, while it's still capturing images. That's an awesome way to get a quick view of how your capture is really looking. You can save that edit too, which makes it great if you want to pester your other late night astro friends which what you are capturing.
With the Dwarflabs App, it looks like all you can do is after you are completely done you can send it to a Cloud based processor they have called Stellar Studios. And it can do Noise Reduction, star correction and a couple of other things. But even though I have read and been aware of Stellar Studios for a long time, I never realized it had only like 5 options. I had just assumed with the way people talked about it, that it would be much more feature packed.
The other thing I was disappointed in with Stellar Studio, was the image you edited, can't be saved back to the Dwarf Mini. The only way to get the fit file of the edit is you have to copy a link they provide (using this on your phone), and then you have to email yourself this link, then open the email on your computer and then you can download the edited fit file. It's just 1 fit file, if I can upload it to the Cloud, the Cloud should be able to download it back to the Dwarf Mini, without having to jump through all of these hoops to get it.
But, like anything new, I think we are always biased to what we knew before. Dwarflabs doesn't add as many new features as ZWO does with the Seestars, but Dwarflabs is also working on adding new features making sure capability wise it keeps up with the Seestars. So hopefully some of these things will be added or cleaned up in the App.
(I didn't think I was writing all of this)
So I took that fit file of IC 405 and took the Stellar Studios edit and ran it through the new Astro editing program called AstroWizard by Lukomatico. So many people are raving about it, so I thought I would give it a try to process the image. And I have to say it did a pretty decent job. Especially for people new into Astrophotography, it's a great way for them to process their images. I am used to Pixinsight, so I am used to more bells and whistles, but AstroWizard did do a very nice job, and I like how Luke set it up, that there is no real guesswork, it's a Step by Step process, so it starts you at Step 1, you make a few choices, then you go to Step 2, again make some choices, etc, until the end.
I then took that final image into Photoshop so I could do a little more hands on editing, and what you see here is the final result.
I am thinking not bad for a first run at the Dwarflabs Mini. If you want a tiny run around Smart Telescope that won't break the bank, this is it for you.
168 Lights @ 60 seconds
All comments are welcome,
Jim
