Anthony Horton4d ago

We are installed in Kurrajong for the long weekend, just outside the worst of Sydney's light pollution, which means I get to open my birthday present a little early.

I plonked the little astromech on the balcony table, spent literally a couple of minutes setting it up,, and told it to start imaging the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy. For now I've just left all the settings in their default fully automatic modes and it was even easier than I expected to get it working.

I'll let it run for a bit, and then start tinkering.

#Astrophotography #SeestarS30Pro #Seestar #Astronomy #Astrodon

Show threadAnthony Horton4d ago

A couple of quick galaxy snaps with the in-telescope automatic image processing. Not a bad start.

#Seestar #SeestarS30Pro #Astrophotography #Astronomy

Show threadAnthony Horton4d ago

The Moon is now up so I got out my tripod & wedge, switched to equatorial mode, and picked an emission nebula as my next target so I could use the internal light pollution filter. I think I'll leave this running for a couple of hours and see what I get.

#SeestarS30Pro #Seestar #Astrophotography #Astronomy

Show threadAnthony Horton4d ago

OK, there we go, the result of pointing the little robotic telescope at the Prawn Nebula for four hours.

It's kept all the data so I can try reprocessing this in Siril, but the automatic image processing has done a decent job.

#SeestarS30Pro #Seestar #Astrophotography #Astronomy

Show threadAnthony Horton3d ago

And now I've tried solar observing mode with the included solar filter. The tiny scope isn't the ideal instrument for this kind of thing, but it does OK. Sunspots are clearly visible, and you can distinguish the umbra and penumbra of the larger ones.

#SeestarS30Pro #Seestar #Astrophotography #Astronomy

Show threadAnthony Horton3d ago
I've been using the Seestar app's planning feature to set up some imaging sessions for tonight. I'm thinking Sharpless 1 to begin with, taking advantage of the dark skies before moonrise to try to pick up the reflection nebulosity, then once the Moon is up go for emission nebulosity with the light pollution filter again, this time the Lagoon Nebula.
Show threadAnthony Horton2d ago

The robotic telescope's output from night two: the Lagoon & Triffid nebulae, the Swan & Eagle nebulae, and the Moon.

I did get an image of Sharpless 1 as well, but it's clear that would need a lot more time than the couple of hours I gave it to get a good image.

#Seestar #SeestarS30Pro #Astronomy #Astrophotography

Show threadAnthony Horton2d ago

My improvised power bank on a piece of string setup worked well last night, and provided more than enough juice to run the telescope all night long. With the internal battery alone the Seestar is supposedly good for 6-7 hours, a bit less if you're using the dew heater (which I will do), so having external power is handy.

I've set up a plan for tonight in the app, and put the telescope and power bank outside on the tripod ready. Again I'll be starting with a reflection nebula until the Moon comes up, then will switch to emission nebulae using the light pollution filter, then finish up with a planetary nebula, again using the light pollution filter.

We should be back from dinner about 7 pm, at which point I'll turn on the telescope, check the polar alignment, and tell it to execute the plan.

#Seestar #SeestarS30Pro #Astronomy #Astrophotography

Show threadAnthony Horton2d ago

Looks like 3 nights in a row of clear skies was too much to ask for. It was clear at dusk but there's a lot of broken cloud out there now, and the app thinks it's only going to get worse as the night goes on.

The smart telescope is smart enough to discard bad exposures, whether they're caused by cloud, obstructions, or tracking problems, so I can just leave it running and it'll do its best with whatever breaks in the clouds that it does get, but I'm not expecting great results from tonight.

The Seestar only ended up with a total of 112 minutes on IC 4592 despite being on that target for almost four hours, so it must have discarded about 50% of the exposures due to clouds. In accordance with the plan it's now moved on to the Cat's Paw and Lobster nebulae, but it's discarding about half of the exposures there too.

#Seestar #SeestarS30Pro #Astrophotography #Astronomy

Show threadpmoe
@spacelizard So do we fare well down here with less of male deer secretion’s star links?
Jun 7 at 2:01pmWeb
Show threadAnthony Horton2d ago
@pmoeser There'd be just as many visible here as anywhere else, but I'm not going to see any until I start looking at individual exposures from the little astro droid. The automatic image stacking would be removing satellite trails the same way it removes other types of bad data.