Very new to Astronomy and obviously the Forum. Have recently purchased a Seestar S50 and have seen some incredible photo's here. Very interested for any tips on viewing/photographing the moon (with colour?), especially with the "Strawberry Moon" currently - viewing from Chepstow, UK.
Appologies if I've posted in the wrong thread...
Welcome to Focalworld! It's great to have you join us.
And this is a great place to ask that question.
Capturing the Moon with the Seestar is super easy. It has a Lunar Mode so you will just use that. Make sure the Seestar is Level when you set it up.
There are 2 methods to capturing the Moon.
1. Be in Photo mode in the Lunar Mode and take a photo. That's the easiest way and the way I did here. Because the Seestar will take a very sharp and detailed photo, and it will save it to whatever device you have the Seestar App on. In my case it's my iPhone 15 Pro Max. Then using a photo editor on your device you can edit the moon photo you captured. I use PS Express.
2. The super detailed but more complex way to do it is in Video Mode. You want to Select Raw mode for the video. You record a video, usually 30 to 60 seconds long. Then you download the video onto your computer and use a program like AutoStakkert (there are other programs as well) to then take that video, find the best frames, it then stacks them and puts out a "tiff" file that you can take into a photo editor of your choice and edit the moon there.
The biggest hurdles with capturing the moon is actually having the Seestar find the moon. It sometimes can't. Like on this image, It was looking for the moon 90 degrees from where the moon really is. Here is a few tips on what to do if the Seestar can't find the moon.
*Note: The Seestar can move super slow at times looking for the moon, so some patience can be needed with it.
1. Go into the Setup mode of the App, in Advanced Features and select Calibrate the Compass. It's easy, the App will prompt you to "slowly" rotate the Seestar and it will tell you when the Compass is Calibrated. You can then go back to the Lunar mode and let the Seestar try and find the moon again.
2. You can also manually find the moon. Let the Seestar try and find the moon. It will tell you when it fails, or if you see it totally opposite the moon, you can click Cancel.
2a. You can rotate the whole tripod until the Seestar is pointing closer to the moon, and then click the Go to the Moon again. You have to be careful the Seestar is still level.
2b. Use the joystick on the screen of the app and use it to aim the Seestar at the moon. One nice thing with this feature is the Seestar is almost always pointing up at the right angle, it's just in the wrong direction. So don't move the aim of the Seestar Up or Down at first, simply go Left or Right with the controls. Once you can see the glow of the moon or part of the moon in the screen, then you can use the Up or Down arrows to center it.
3. Exit the Lunar mode, and go to the StarGazing mode. Type Moon in the Search bar and let it find the Moon that way. This is actually pretty reliable. So you let it go to it, it will never actually be able to find the moon because it's too large for it to Plate Solve where it's at. But it will point right at it. So you let the GoTo of the StarGazing mode do its thing. Watch it, give it 30 seconds or so and once you see the Seestar isn't moving anymore (even though the Screen will say it's still looking for it), Click Cancel. Almost always you will see a bright overexposed moon in the screen. That's because the Seestar has different exposures between looking for galaxies and the brightness of the moon. So click Cancel, and then go back into Lunar Mode. Don't click on GoTo, but instead click on the line underneath that which says "Skip GoTo to Observe".
When you see the moon in the App, you now need to make sure it's in Focus. Touch your screen on the edge of the moon, and a little square will popup. Then Press the AF button along the right side of the App and let it focus. It takes about 5 or 10 seconds and you will see it in Focus and really sharp.
Then go and take your photos or video's of it. There is an exposure slider on the screen, so you can adjust the exposure to your liking.
You mentioned Color.
First, for the Strawberry Moon. You will want to capture it as close to the horizon as possible. Bear in mind that the closer the moon (or sun) is to the horizon they will look their very worse as the atmospherice disturbances are multiplied shooting low across the sky. So your sharpest images of the moon or sun will be when they are higher up from the horizon, probably 45 degrees or higher is best. But if you want the Strawberry moon, you will want to capture it as low as possible. But if the moon isn't super sharp, that's why.
Second, with the Strawberry Moon, the Seestar (or any telescope, camera) can change the White Balance when it's imaging. So you will see visually a nice reddish/ Orange looking moon, but your camera (Seestar) is capturing it and it's looking white. So when you edit it, you will have to in your Photo Editor change the White Balance (Color Balance) manually to get the color of the moon to be what you saw. That's really normal.
Since mentioning Moon Color, let me discuss quickly the normal Colored Moon we see in images. It's called the Mineral Moon.
Getting a moon to have the Mineral Moon look from the Seestar, or any telescope or camera can be a bit tricky. You will want to google "Mineral Moon processing" for some more detailed tips. But here is the main way to do it. With your moon in your photo editor, increase the Saturation about 30% or so. To where you just barely see any difference. Save that version of the moon. Reopen the newly saved Moon, go back and increase the saturation about 30% again, to where you just see a bit more color. You might have to repeat that step 4 or 5 times, or you might have to repeat the step 10 times. The key is the color wont' look right if you try to do it all at once, you need to add a little color and then keep adding on to that. Note: the Color Balance of the moon can usually get a bit crazy as you add more color. So you will have to manually change the White Balance of the Moon making it cooler or warmer as needed.
A couple of final tips when setting up your Seestar in general.
1. Go into the Advanced Settings and click the "Save each frame in enhancing" to On. You are new to Astro, this will let you save each of the images the Seestar takes and saves them on the Seestar. That way later you can download those and take them into Pixinsight or other Astro editing program and stack and edit them yourself.
When the Seestar is capturing a galaxy or nebula in StarGazing mode, it will automatically stack each image, that's what you will see displayed on your screen. It does a pretty good job, but it doesn't eliminate satellites or planes that make trails through your image. Pixinsight will eliminate those. So it's handy to have them saved on your Seestar, even if at first you might not be using them.
2. In the Advanced Settings you can also change the Exposure length of the individual images the Seestar takes to then stack. 10, 20 or 30 seconds. The default is 10 seconds, I would recommend just keeping it at 10 seconds until you use it more and can decide what is the right exposure length for you. So don't change this now, but I wanted you to know it's there.
3. Back on the main Setup screen click on Focus. Then turn on "Focus Panel". That lets you manually focus the Seestar if needed. I rarely do that as the AutoFocus is so good. But what turning that on does, is it will display what the Focus is on the left hand side of the screen with arrows and a numerical value in the middle. The focus of the Seestar will change during the night. I like having the focus value displayed on the main screen in case when you do an AutoFocus it doesn't focus right, you can learn what the value range of that focus number should be, so you can tell at a glance if your Seestar is close to being in Focus.
4. Not a setting, but a tip in regards to Focus. You should click on the AutoFocus between every object you capture, or once an hour or two. As the temperature changes during the night, so does the focusing of the optics in a telescope (or Seestar). So you can start with the Seestar totally in Focus, but if you don't keep doing the AF every hour or two, you can find that 4 or 5 hours later, your images are out of focus. That's normal due to the way the lenses react to temperature changes. So you have to stay on top of that.
I think that's it.... if you have questions please be sure to ask.
And once again, Welcome to FocalWorld!
