Hello EAA Enthusiasts! I just purchased the Seestar today from High Point Scientific for $499. This new all in one system will be easy and fast to set up for my next season star parties in my area. I have heard great things about this smart scope and decided the price point was well worth the purchase. This scope will be great for outreach and with the triplet APO optics and 250 mm focal length (f/5), I’m sure this scope will offer beautiful images.
I don’t want to sound like an advertisement for this product, I just want to say that I will be journaling my experience with the SeeStar here and show many image examples. Please note that I will stay true to EAA and I will not show any images that have been post processed. I will only show images from the live stack with various on the fly processing the scope offers.
Hi All,
Well I just received my ZWO SeeStar S50 and getting ready to set it up and test it. I have bad weather that will last a while so I will try out the scenery mode first. The only problem I see is that I have read about the latest firmware being buggy so I will wait for the new build to fix hose problems first. As soon as I hear about the new release, I will start taking pictures and give a blog like update. Clear Sky’s and Happy Holidays!
Received a ZWO SeeStar S50 for Christmas and today was the first day to see how it works. This is my new smart telescope I will be using for Deep Space photography and to take it to outreach events and star parties. Well I took some shots of Mount Rainier from Big Sky Park. Well this machine is incredible in scenery mode. I just pointed to the distant mountain and did an auto focus and took a few shots. That easy. Can’t wait to get clear Sky’s for some Deep Space EAA and imagery.
Hi All, I Just wanted to share this photo of Multiple SeeStar images from a Cloudy Nights Member: Tarbat. He stated that all these Seestar images were taken under relatively poor sky conditions, typically with intermittent clouds. All images straight out of the SeeStar and most were 10 second stacks under 1 hour.
Hi All, So as I was testing how to level the SeeStar, I noticed that it takes some time moving the tripod legs up and down to get the required level set. I went ahead and purchased this Tripod Level base for the SeeStar since I have read that this will reduce the level time to just a few minutes.
@avescio
That level is real cool. When I finally get the resources to order one, I will be looking for something similar. Can you post a link to this product?
I would have ordered a SeeStar already but my daughters keep getting married and taking my money.
I bought this for 17 dollars on an app called AliExpress. It is an app from China but I find incredible deals. I’m planning on getting a Tablet Stand for 12 dollars soon. It will hold my Android tablet that I use to connect to my SeeStar at Outreach events.
Hi @avescio. You have had your SeeStar for over 7 months now. How are you going with it? Have you been able to take a lot more images over the last few months? I hope it is going well for you. These cameras are becoming popular and it is good to see some amazing results.
These look amazing. Can you see the object the telescope is looking at in real-time with one of these or only see the processed image after it has been taken?
Hello graham,
The beauty of these new smart scopes is that it uses a technique called live stacking. So when you choose an object from the app and hit the find button, the scope will take a picture of the sky and “Plate-Solve”, to the object. once it centers the object, you can click the auto focus button for the perfect focus. after that, hit the red button and it will take the darks needed to help with noise cancellation, select a filter if needed, and it will start taking 10-20 or 30 second subs and stack each image. usually you will see the object within a couple of images and eventually you will see these objects form on your screen in color. As shown in images attached. The cool thing is that this scope is great for outreach and for people who will want to try astrophotography for the first time and not spend an arm and leg on expensive rigs. The fit files are stored on the SeeStar and all you need to do is just download the images to a computer and try some post processing with deep sky stacker, Siril, and Gimp (all free).
I had a SeeStar for a few months. While it was very easy to use, I disliked the narrow Field of View and the, relatively speaking, poor sensor. I ran mine on an EQ mount, aligned it with Polaris and shot a few hours on one target without field rotation. I just found my main SCT and now, new RedCat 51 Refractor gave me the results I am looking for, so I sold it. Were I to buy another Smart Scope, I would look at the Dwarf III, but that’s just my opinion.
