Hi, I’m Luca! If you’re into astrophotography and astronomy, you’re in the right place. This channel is all about helping you capture the beauty of the night sky.
What You’ll Find Here: - Astrophotography Knowledge Sessions: Practical tips and techniques to enhance your skills, from basics to advanced strategies.
- Equipment Reviews: Honest reviews of telescopes, smart telescopes, and astrophotography cameras to help you choose the right gear.
- Post-Processing Tutorials: Step-by-step guides to edit your astrophotography images effectively.
- Live Q&A Sessions: Join me for live discussions where we tackle your questions in real time.
- Astrophotography Projects: Follow along as I take on various challenges and share insights.
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First timer here, the first thing i saw was how you are standing...You need to go to a chiropractor to set you straith, your back, hips ect...Too much stress if i have to guess. look the word up on YT if you never had it, it will make you a new woman.
This is the first version of the mosaic feature. Be patient. They improved every new feature they implemented over time. We are talking absolut a 500$ device and they already did more FREE software upgrades than we could expect. Mosaic obviously works fine and it will get better and better.
Sure, in fact it’s still in testing and hopefully it will be improved on before it’s pushed into the productive version. However as I am a beta tester it’s right that I actually test and find issues - it’s the only way it will get better.
Very interesting and thorough look at the beta mosaic option for the Seestar. I may try it when the public version becomes available, but I also have a Dwarf 3 due to arrive late next month so am likely to be using that to image larger objects such as M31 and the Cygnus Loop.
Thank You. This is highly interesting and makes the difficulties of implementing the mosaic mode very clear. I had already suspected that mosaic imaging with the Seestar would be very lengthy, but also underestimated the necessary calculation time. It might be good to be able to switch off internal stacking completely. On the other hand, external software is then necessary, Siril cannot automatically assemble mosaics and Pixinsight is quite expensive.
It would be a great option to turn off stacking. However then the manual process I did would be an even bigger challenge with no reference field of view to register to!
You sound so happy! I love when people share that passion! I sound like that when photographing aurora (in germany not as rare as one might think!) or the sun or when my results of a night out photographing the sky comes to fruition :D
@the_space_koala i may have yelled in excitement as i saw the x7.1 flare 15 minutes after it happened! To bad it was night here, otherwise i may have had it on camera too. I've already placed my camera if the clouds decide to go away :)
I appreciate the feedback. I understand it can be annoying to some. However, as these videos are candid and unscripted, others would find the “umm” and pauses equally frustrating. I’m trying to get better at speaking but in the meantime I need to keep the pace of the videos up so that I don’t post 40 minute videos 😁
@@the_space_koala pauses are usually not noticeable to the viewers. Perhaps taking a public speaking class. I've had to do them. They can teach you methods to avoid those filler words. It's not hard, especially if you are comfortable watching yourself recorded. Many people are not. And there is nothing wrong with scripting. GenAI systems can help dramatically and get you to the next level. Good luck.
Another excellent video-thank you, SK! I hope the smart telescope industry inspires newcomers to catch the astronomy bug. I also hope you had the chance to take advantage of the pristine skies for your own projects. In your opinion, how do you see smart telescopes shaping the field of astronomy now and in the future?
For me smart scopes are for electronically assisted astronomy not for astrophotography. Of course you take photos but with the current designs you’ll just never reach the quality we expect from an astrophoto. The direction seems to be going towards even smaller/simplified designs, understandably so. It will stay a valid option for people new to astronomy and I think it’s great for that but I don’t see them take over because as long as they don’t make 8”+ designs, traditional scopes will keep having an edge
A lot of people are doing it however there is no official support for it. People put it on a wedge then the scope compensates for not being level which reduces field rotation
@@the_space_koala Well... you have easily $20k sitting on that tripod... just step back and look at it hanging there to one side... I'd hate to hear that it took a dive...
Thank you for this analysis. It is refreshing to see, that some people do understand the concept. I have spent counless hours on Clody Nights and in my local club explaining this to people who simply refuse to let go of this daylight photography concept. It is so frustrating, how many astrophotographers completely misunderstand it. TLDR; f-number is a completely useless metric in astrophotography. Aperture dictates light gathering "speed" and focal lenght dictates the FoV. Optimally you need two telescopes, one with a higher FL for small objects like distant galaxies and one with lower FL for those nice, wiedefield nebulea. The bigger the aperture you can aford on both telescopes the better obviously up to a point, where your mount can support it. (Things like under-/ oversampling given your cameras, seeing, light polution, wind, etc. will obviously play a role in determinig the optimal setup.)
Thank you, I agree with everything you said. I spent more than a week making this video, preparing animations etc and while some people got it, I still see some reactions that make me think I wasn’t able to get my point across.
Thanks for your excellent videos... The SeeStar jumpstarted my AP adventure. Since the Dwarf 3 has much improved auto AP with a better sensor and EQ, maybe ZWO will catch up with an evolved version. Regards, Michael
I don’t believe DSS would be able to do it as you cannot define an external registration template. A good free option is Siril! I’ll be showing more details on the processing when I do the video on the smart scope calibration frames as well!
Good job, make a lot of sense what you explained, I used also Seestar in equatorial Mode and works fine, but they do not an option to set it in equatorial mode works because the sky alignment process, any changes in beta about equatorial mode? Thank you for your time, great place you have all skies for you.
Great video thankyou.I'm waiting for my Dwarf 3 to come so hopefully I'll never have to use the mosaic on my seestar, especially if it's a lot of hassle.
Great video and thanks for sharing. It seems as though it has moved from a quick and easy session snaping numerious targets in one night to a much more dedicated affair. Not what i imagined it was going to be and not for everyone i suppose given the time required.
I agree - whoever wants to keep it simple should definitely just stick to the single frame mode! It’s nice to have this option though for those who like a challenge
It seems a bit strange that one is going to buy a seestar for the convencience, and also invest in pixinsight costing about as much as the smart telescope and invest a lot of time actually learning how to use it.
@@the_space_koala That's what happened to me. ;) I did a trial of PixInsight but didn't like the interface or complexity. I keep thinking about purchasing it though. It appears to produce the best results and I'd like to use BlurXTerminator with it. I might have to get it as Siril can't seem to stack all the frames from the latest Seestar beta mosaic. I lost 199 frames out of 543 during registration using the Siril OSC_Preprocessing_WithoutDBF_With_Mosaic.ssf script (below). The Seestar-produced fit file, while containing all 543 frames, is less than desirable. It appears the only change to the original script noted in the comments is the addition of the seqapplyreg pp_light -framing=max command. If you have any tips for stacking Seestar beta mosaics in Siril, I'd appreciate hearing them. Thanks for the great video. ############################################ # Script for Siril 1.0 # August 2020 # (C) Cyril Richard / Colmic # OSC_Preprocessing_WithoutDBF v1.0 # ########### PREPROCESSING SCRIPT ########### # Script for color camera preprocessing # needs 1 set of RAW images in the working # directory, within 1 directory: # lights # ############################################ requires 0.99.4 #preprocess lights cd lights convert light -out=../process cd ../process preprocess light -debayer #align lights register pp_light seqapplyreg pp_light -framing=max #stack calibrated lights stack r_pp_light rej 3 3 -norm=addscale -output_norm -out=../result cd .. close
Great video! Excellent analysis of the built-in mosaicking process! “20 minutes per region”! I like the “infinitely better” result. Do you use GraXpert?
Very good telescope. I would transport it on a mountain and use it for taking new objects, like the new comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) and make a mosaic. M 31 start to be boring in long run.
yeah I think you just need a wedge and point it more or less to the North (or the South). Polar alignment wouldn't need to be accurate because it's going to plate solve and build a model regardless!
Excellent explanation! I was wondering about this new mosaic routine-it's not without its challenges 🙂 Are you still enjoying the clear skies of beautiful La Palma, or have you already returned to ???
I think the flattener is already included - the field seems entirely correct! A larger sensor would be great but would increase the cost and make calibration frames even more necessary
Great introduction, thx. And also thx for a closer look to processing in pi. Very profound. And I must say that the result is really good. The first time where I can honestly say this. Ok, very bright object, but very short integration time. Mosaicmode seems not to be the real game changer for now, but we will see. I'm looking forward to your calibration frame video. We will see if I will get in love with this small thing.
@@the_space_koala Yeah, you are correct. A little over a month. Siril Script I've been using to clump all the data together for multiple days. requires 1.2.0 # Set precision to 16 bits set16bits # Convert Light Frames to .fit files #Convert all fits found in the home folder into Sequence lights convert light -fitseq -out=process cd process #Calibrate Light Frames #Decode the color matrix calibrate light -debayer #Remove background gradients (adjust if needed) seqsubsky pplight -rbf -samples=20 -tolerance=0.5 -smooth=0.5 #Align lights #and register the images to each other #First, create a registration but only save it #temporarily register bkg_pp_light -2pass #Then apply the registration seqapplyreg bkg_pp_light -framing=max -drizzle -filter-round=0.3 -filter-bkg=3k -filter-wfwhm=10 #Set precision to 32 bits set32bits # Stack calibrated lights to result.fit # Stack all registered images. The file name will be extracted from the FITS header stack r_bkg_pp_light rej 3 3 -rejmap -norm=addscale -output_norm -rgb_equal -out=../results/result.fit # Now move to the results folder cd ../results # flip if required # Load the stack, flip it, and save again load result.fit # Remove hot pixels find_cosme 3 3 # Flip the image mirrorx -bottomup save result.fit # Save the stack with data in the file name save linearstack$OBJECT:%s$$DATE-OBS:dm12$$LIVETIME:%d$s # Load the result image # and load it again load result.fit #Save the final stretched image savejpg final$OBJECT:%s$$DATE-OBS:dm12$$LIVETIME:%d$s savepng final$OBJECT:%s$$DATE-OBS:dm12$$LIVETIME:%d$s #savetif command not working yet with path parsing #savetif final$OBJECT:%s$$DATE-OBS:dm12$_$LIVETIME:%d$s savetif result_final load result_final.tif
I use multiple ASIAIRs so it’s very convenient to be able to switch between them in station mode. I don’t mind that much about the download speed. I have a VPN so this way I can also start them and check on them remotely
I have a MacBookPro with Apple Silicon (M1Pro), which natively runs the mobile ASIAIR app on macOS! I only use my MacBookPro for all of my imaging with the ASIAIR app. I always connect to the ASIAIR mini 5GHz WiFi hotspot, which allows for very fast download to the MacBook. In general I connect a 2TB SSD to the ASIAIR, which works flawlessly.
I used to do the same on my Mac, but now I am a beta tester for the ASIAIR and I wouldn’t know how to download the test version for the Mac so I gave up on that 😁
@@the_space_koala Not very dark, but good enough. Not like going up to the mountains. That takes me 2h… I usually go into the Haute Valais for dark skies.
