Three Seestar Captures

[kiwiapple]

I had my little Seestar S50 out last night on close to the shortest night of the year (I'm in New Zealand, so the summer solstice is just 12 days away) and it managed to capture no fewer than four targets during the 5 hours or so of proper nighttime I had. The first one (which is not ready to share yet) was a shot of Jupiter, but after that I went for three deep space objects--M78 (the Casper the Friendly Ghost Nebula, apparently), SH2-298 (Thor's Helmet Nebula) and C49 (Rosette Nebula). For a tiny little telescope that weighs next to nothing and takes no effort to set up, the results are pretty impressive straight out of the box, though I did process these myself in Pixinsight and Photoshop. I'm pretty pleased with this purchase!

 

[AlanLichty]

Pretty cool results. It does help that you already had a clue how to process astro images before taking delivery on one of these.

 

[kiwiapple]

Pretty cool results. It does help that you already had a clue how to process astro images before taking delivery on one of these.

Thanks. Yes, that's definitely helpful. But I think it will set a lot of people down the slippery slope of diving headlong into astrophotography.

 

[JimFox]

Great work James. Thors Helmet is my favorite of these. I got some time on it the other day too.

It's funny, it used to be I would capture 5 images in a night because I was so excited and I wanted to capture as many things as possible. Slowly I got to where I had the patience to image just one object all night long. But now with the Seestar I am back to 4 or 5 images captured in a night, not because I am impatient, but because of field rotation. It's funny though, for whatever the reason everything has come back full circle.

 

[kiwiapple]

Great work James. Thors Helmet is my favorite of these. I got some time on it the other day too.

It's funny, it used to be I would capture 5 images in a night because I was so excited and I wanted to capture as many things as possible. Slowly I got to where I had the patience to image just one object all night long. But now with the Seestar I am back to 4 or 5 images captured in a night, not because I am impatient, but because of field rotation. It's funny though, for whatever the reason everything has come back full circle.

You me, same same!

 

[Dan Moorehead]

Wonderful

 

[Mike Lewis]

James,

Great set, especially amazing to see Thor's Helmet come out like this on that little rig!

ML

 

[vpn69]

I had my little Seestar S50 out last night on close to the shortest night of the year (I'm in New Zealand, so the summer solstice is just 12 days away) and it managed to capture no fewer than four targets during the 5 hours or so of proper nighttime I had. The first one (which is not ready to share yet) was a shot of Jupiter, but after that I went for three deep space objects--M78 (the Casper the Friendly Ghost Nebula, apparently), SH2-298 (Thor's Helmet Nebula) and C49 (Rosette Nebula). For a tiny little telescope that weighs next to nothing and takes no effort to set up, the results are pretty impressive straight out of the box, though I did process these myself in Pixinsight and Photoshop. I'm pretty pleased with this purchase!View attachment 67541View attachment 67542View attachment 67543

Hi James,

I just can't believe how you get the quality of images from your Seestar!

I saw this post and last night tried my hand and even after 104min (624 10 sec exposures) granted from a bortle 5 area outside of Melbourne the best I can get is a blurry noisy mess on Casper's Ghost after using Sirl to stack and clean up, still learning Siril too.

https://ibb.co/mDXbKd3

 

[Comet Hunter]

Impressive

 

[JimFox]

Hi James,

I just can't believe how you get the quality of images from your Seestar!

I saw this post and last night tried my hand and even after 104min (624 10 sec exposures) granted from a bortle 5 area outside of Melbourne the best I can get is a blurry noisy mess on Casper's Ghost after using Sirl to stack and clean up, still learning Siril too.

https://ibb.co/mDXbKd3

It's great to have another Seestar user. Caspers Ghost might be a bit too faint for the Seestar to get really good unless you image it over several nights and then stack all of those nights in Siril or DeepSkyStacker.

 

[kiwiapple]

Hi there and thanks for your comments! I’ve been slammed with guests at my “real” job so I haven’t been able to do any astrophotography lately (clouds haven’t helped). With the Seestar I don’t go for faint objects since it just doesn’t seem like it would perform well. Maybe try brighter targets and see how you do?

 

[vpn69]

Thanks all for the replies, I'll keep at it! I have tied some brighter objects and they have turned out much better.. now just to hope for some clearer nights

 

[Douglas Sherman]

Beautiful work. I especially like Thor's Helmet.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Seemingly a great setup for those times when you cannot or do not wish to spend the time and effort required for a GEM setup for astrophotography.

ML