Hey everyone! Join me on my journey into astrophotography. I'll be shooting photos of nebulae, galaxies and star clusters with my DSLR camera and telescope. I'll be reviewing the products I use and giving general advice to beginners who are looking to start out in the hobby.
Great targets. At 40.75 degrees latitude here in dark sky Nevada, USA, I was able to image M8/M20. Wonderful colors! I am planning a trip to a very dark Nevada location for the Perseids (Check out Eastern Sierra Observatory) and putting together a list of targets for August 9-12th. After a few years, it takes a bit more effort to find targets I haven't imaged yet. Clear skies.
Thank you for this. I'm a full-time commercial photographer and have always been intrigued by astrophotography. But after investing over 55k in my work camera gear, lighting, and modifiers I don't want to go down the astro rabbit hole since I don't plan to make money on this. So I'm going to try one of them. The price compared to the 'other gear' you use? Please find me a medium format commercial still camera for 500.00. LOL, I'm looking forward to this journey so thank you.
Call me skeptical but how can a small telescope be able to view DSOs like it does. What is the magnification power rating? Is it just a device that can only present views from a database?
Sooner or later these “toys” will take over a whole segment of the Astro market just like the iPhones and Samsungs took over the point and shoot camera market . The technology will only get better and better. Thats my prediction.
One thing I didn't like is that this scope was sold as "ideal for astrophotography" by my local astro shop. Even the SkyWatcher site itself mentions photography explicitly. But unless you get the corrector/reducer, your stars are deformed when you move away from the center. But what I dislike the most about the telescope is the shoddy case it came in. You may think it's aluminium, it even says so on the site. But after packing the scope in wrong one time, I ended up with a tear in the case because it's just cardboard with a super thin layer of aluminium glued to it so that "technically" they can claim it's an "aluminium" case, but in reality, it's just cardboard cosplaying as metal. It's also too small to comfortably pack the star diagonal and eyepieces for visual observation next to the camera adapter, field flattener (0.85x reducer/corrector) and rotator. And you can forget about putting a camera in there. Currently thinking about upgrading to a larger case, made of actual metal. But it's gonna be a chore to cut out the foam to fit the scope and accessories.
Wow! Very helpful! In 8 minutes you reduced most of my jitters over the meridician flip. The ASIAIR series has a programmable meridian flip which I had not used because of those jitters. So, thanks much for this info video. So, really, how do you go about determining if an object will need a flip or not? You said that you used to avoid objects that would pass the meridian. How do you know which ones will? What guide or guides do you use in helping select your astro objects? I have trees, etc. How do i go about deciding ahead of time which objects I can photograph for the evening, taking into account my surroundings, city lights, trees, etc., then considering my telescope, etc. Maybe you could do a tutorial on the process you use-- from square one. Say, start with no idea of what you can or will shoot. Where do you start? A tutorial along those lines would be very helpful for me. Thanks for the great videos!
I'm 64, on a pension, living in a mid-sized city with light pollution, and have an arthritic neck that makes it difficult to crane my head around to look through telescopes. I love astronomy but don't have the skills to set up a dedicated rig. I also have lots of interests and don't care to invest the time into procuring and learning how to set up professional equipment. I just want to be able to look up and see nebula and galaxies and other objects. For $499, I couldn't be happier. The other night I was with my nephew and had it set up on my front lawn as traffic passed back and forth 10 yards away on the main avenue while streetlights shone down upon us. I saw the Dumbbell Nebula was supposed to be visible, not that I could see anything but a dozen or so stars because of the light pollution. But I told it to find the nebula. We both squealed in delight as the nebula showed up on my tablet just a minute later. I still get excited over things that show up when I use it.
The one thing I would add is that one can get individual fit files of an object and then use either freeware or payware to stack and edit and get better final images. So, it can also be a "gateway" to trying the editing process.
Fundamentally it's about satisfying a deep curiosity that we humans have for finding out what is up there. Any tool that helps us do that is a legitimate one. I have recently acquired a Seestar. Coming from a photographic background where Gear Acquisition Syndrome is a trap for many, I appreciate that this bit of kit gets to the point. No one really cares what struggle you go through to get a shot.....they care about the result. (Post-processing the raw files in Siril helps considerably with its results).
One part of your review on the seestars , nick is that you do feel a bit of a disconnect with the device . I was an early adopter but sold it as I was not getting any satisfaction using the device . But I am going to buy another one , why ??? Because of the ease of use and at least seeing something in our atrocious sky is better than lugging out my other rig only to bring it in after 30 minutes .
Whilst I think the argument that it removes some of the personal-growth element by "doing it all for you" is an argument (and it is something I sometimes feel myself), I don't think it's a particularly good one. If you boil that argument down, as an example; no-one would be using modern astrophotography digital cameras, or even DSLR cameras. They'd still be struggling using plates. But that technology was superseded by another, then that tech was superseded etc etc.
A very good video about the Seestar. All the relevant arguments for its place in this hobby. The Seestar and the Dwarf are game changers opening up this hobby to more people. When I heard the news about the Seestar I ordered it directly from ZWO, eagerly waiting for the delivery. It did not disappoint. Still as I am very new to this hobby, only a bit over a year as an astrophotographer, I put my effort in buying and trying out both dedicated astro gear and DLSR/Mirrorless cameras. The first sessions were absolutely pathetic 🤣, but now I have got many good sessions during the winter and spring (when the skies are relatively clear, which are rare occasions where I live on the northern hemisphere). Like Nick says in the video, the quality of the stacks from the Seestar are OK, but you can not expect the quality you may achieve from a dedicated asto-rig. But they will set you down 10 times the price of the Seestar. And the results (images) are not 10 times better. And you *will* need to spend hours in front of your PC to get the images you get "live" from the Seestar. Post processing is a difficult skill to master. When I first was seeking advice on the net from sites like Cloudy Nights I got a bit "depressed" as the "hard core" astrophotographers seemed to be more into fiddling with the gear and scaring away newcomers about all the effort "needed" with taking calibration frames. So far I do not "waste" any time on taking calibration shots and feel my processeed images are more than good enough. The only exception is the ASI294MC. For this I take darks and flats for the setup I am using with it. Back to the Seestar. I did try it out when I got it in january, but did not use it more than a few nights as I had more than enough trying to improve my skills with my dedicated rigs. But when I went on holiday to Greece in late may I brought the Seestar with me. (The season where I live is over. Midnight sun/no dark skies from May until mid August 😵). I was mainly interested with capturing the Milky Way which I did, but I let the Seestar run when I was taking picture with my Fujitsu X-H2 paired with Samyang 14mm and Sigma 18-50mm. The stacks I got from the Seestar was very satisfying as the site I shot from was Bortle 2. So, do not listen to the "elitist" among the community regarding Seestar being a "useless toy". That is far from the truth.
I took up astrophotography a few months ago at the age of 70. I put together a nice rig around a Skywatcher 80mm refractor. Then, I had a back injury . I was so disappointed over this disruption to progress in my new hobby. I purchased a Seestar and am very pleased with it. It's just an easier and lighter way for me to get out and capture subs. I still get to enjoy spending time stacking and processing the files. It's a great piece of tech for a very reasonable price.
Your thoughts? Going camping later this month . Thinking of getting it for this reason and others you noted (cloudy night, demanding job, young kid, can't be buggered to set up bigger rigs). Battery life of about 6 hours should suffice for a couple of nights of camping (maybe a couple of hours each night). There is no electricity at the campsite. I have a Star Adventurer GTi and the Star Adventurer 2i but the prospect of packing up DSLR camera, lens/scope, batteries, tripods, polar aligning, etc. puts me off. Will also have about 6 kids around who demand "instant gratification" so the live stacking and relative quick sessions on a target (about 30 mins) can be a boon combined with a 10" tablet. I think I just convinced myself. Guess I'm easy but not cheap. lol. Now onto the fun times of moving funds so the accountant (wife) is not alerted of purchase. :D
I would just grab a battery bank (or a bigger battery "generator") and it'll last days. I grabbed a 256 wh battery and it lasted my friends and I 4 days out in the woods of just charging the smartphones and seestar.
The Seestar does create FITS files (not just jpegs), which can be post processed to improve quality considerably. If you're just looking at jpeg images you're missing out on what the Seestar can do. The best way to photograph the moon (or the sun) is to take a RAW video and use an app to glean the best frames and create a much sharper detailed image. If harder were better then we'd all be using DOS on our computers, wouldn't we?
I have had my Seestar for a bit less than a year (I think it arrived in November for me) but it has been a nice addition to my collection of telescopes for much the same reason as you. The ease of setup cannot be beat, and while it isn’t as flexible as my “proper” rigs, since you cannot set it to take a certain number of hours on one target and then move on to another, for example, and the lack of an equatorial mount causing significant field rotation for another, it still can produce pretty decent images for the amount of effort you put into it.
I wonder if the CCP is subsidizing this product, seems too cheap. Someone should come out with a strain wave mount with motorized AL/Az controls for polar alignment with built in computer like ASIAir or NINA. Plug your cameras, focuser, EFW dew heater into the mount. Point it north and level. Turn it on and go inside to monitor. Maybe the Celestron Origin is that but at $4k it’s expensive. I think if these become more mainstream people will get bored because there is no challenge and everyone’s photos will look the same. I would expect to see a lot of these for sale on the used market in a couple of years.
Thank you Nick. I hope you and the family are well. I think I will be getting a seestar S50 in the future as. I've dismantled my astrophotography dso rig, because I live in a 1st floor flat and have to take everything down 2 flights of stairs in 2 trips then lump everything back up I the middle of the night twice, dangle an extension lead out of a 1st floor window to power it. Then having to stay outside all the time with it whilst imaging as it's in a communal area, then as you said with the weather we have it never went out for months. So the seestar will definitely for my use of it in the future. Thank you again for your great video clear skies.
Hi Lee , I didn’t know you had dismantled your rig mate :( but I certainly understand why you have . I reckon it was really hard for you to do that . But keep the faith mate
Agree with the review, its well balanced and fair. I used the Seestar for the April Solar eclipse with great success. I wish there was a way to use it for Jupiter/Saturn, perhaps a future model will be good for that. I've done more imaging with the Seestar than I ever did with my traditional equipment. When AI allows for an easier image enhancing experience, I'll use that. Cheers.
the seestar replaced every piece of astro kit i once owned, was getting fed up carrying heavy rigs, cables, laptop etc etc..yes its not perfect, but for my needs now its perfect...also have the dwarf 2...wont be upgrading to dwarf 3, not a big enough upgrade in my books..
I completely agree with your points on the SeeStar. The last couple of years in Glasgow the weather has been appalling for this hobby. Getting the HQ5 PRO and all the rest of the gear out of the garage and set up and then clouds roll in, basically put me off this hobby. With the SeeStar I just look out the window and if there 's a break in the clouds I can pop it down in the garden and start imaging. It's got me fired up again with astrophotography so much that I'm looking forward to the season starting again and running both the SeeStar and my bigger mounts again. It's also great at outreach events when my society does public talks. Yes the public like to use mark-1 eyeball to look through our telescopes but they love looking at images appearing on my ipad and realise it's not as intimidating to use as the "real rigs"
Spot on! The satisfaction of doing everything yourself👍. Im a weelchair user due to paralysed legs (MS) and i absolutely love setting up my gear, Ioptron Skyguider pro "Ipolar" with a full spectrum astro modded Canon 77D, and my Canon L lenses. Getting a RedCat 51 this winter. Greetings from Denmark. Clear sky's.
What I personally recommend is getting touched with your local astronomy club and go to public star Partners. This way, you can look through and see many different types of telescopes. And you can figure out which one you like the best for you and what kind of astronomy it is that you want to do..
Thank you for taking the time to help all of us out! This was a VERY informative video, and I'm looking forward to trying it out on my next open cluster photography session. However, I am not getting the same result you are at the 3:23 mark, where you add a new layer on top of the one you just did a curve adjustment on. When I click on new layer, I just get a white empty box above my first levels adjustment layer, but you get the background image. Can you please help? You've got a new sub! 🙂
I think you should judge focus on the stars in the center of the image as opposed to the edge. Egg shaped stars at the edge is probably due to field curvature, and no adjustment to shutter speed will change the field curvature. Looking at the stars in the center of the image will more accurately judge your shutter speed. If they are elongated in the center due it'll be due to inaccurate polar alignment and a long shutter speed.
Don't feel too badly, Nick. Where I live in Texas we have not had a clear night in many weeks. I'm thinking of taking up cloud photography and ditching astro.
Any image is a success, as you have photographed something tricky to do. With the bad weather this year in the UK, I have had maybe one or two imaging nights. I have been thinking of taking up solar of lunar imaging, but I only have a Redcat51 so need something a bit longer reach.
