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I come to SeeStar from years of “traditional” astrophotography. At 83, I made the move to the S50 because I not long wanted the hassle of using a full rig. I’ve been amazed and now, with mosaic, I’m even more impressed. Thanks for the video.
I love this little scope but it is affecting my other astrophtography. I am so lazy, every night its like, do I want to haul all that gear out and set up or carry this little briefcase telescope whereever i want and be running in 5 minutes. I know i will get better imaging with the bigger setups. I have found tht the seestar imaging is "good enough". I mean, none of us are shooting for publication, how many images are there of M31 for example. Great to share with family and friends and public partys.. They make a 80 or 100, same features, im all over it and selling everything else. Great Channel
I understand where you're coming from, I find that these days I mostly use my SY f2 135 or Red Cat51 with my Star Adventurer GTi because I can leave everything set up and just take it outside when there is a break in the clouds. Using the ASIair mini it takes no time at all to polar align, I can be imagining within five minutes. At nearly seventy I'm getting too old to be outside lugging heavy mounts etc around in the middle of winter. If I hadn't already got a Red Cat51 and camera I would definitely buy a SeeStar S50. If ZWO add an EQ feature to the SeeStar I think many more people will follow your example. I do have one scope semi permanently set up outside, but some nights, especially if it's forecast to cloud over later on or there is a chance of rain I just leave it covered up and use the lighter rigs.
I have the same issue, love the ability to image when I want to and no longer drag a trailer of equipment out to our club's dark site. I have done more astronomy in 2024 than I have in the last 10 years.
Good comments here! From several people It's nice to read the positive And beneficial things about the seestar, and it's kind of fun and different tool for astrophotography Same here,!
Same phenomenon here hahaha specially lazy on taking darks and flats after a session I'm prefering to take out the Seestar instead and that's it 😅 And I can shoot even on cloudy or rainy season if I see a hole in the clouds, take quickly the Seestar shoot and bring it back indoors before it rains in 2 mins.😆
I just tried it on m31 last night and gave it 45 min. I was amazed how well it worked! I feel like I have an all new telescope! It’s magic watching the frames overlap, causing lines and seams and as it keeps overlaying, those blend in and vanish. I hope zwo keeps up the great support for the s50 as they add the s30 and future models. I have also been checking their light pollution map with a bortal meter and it’s quite accurate. I’m so impressed with zwo. Thanks Cuiv for your work too!
20 years ago I would have scoffed at this and wanted to do everything manually. Now, I'm just like "Seestar, take a good pic of this thing in the sky" and I sit back and relax. I'm going to buy one because it really makes life easy and I'm all about that nowadays.
I have gazed on a number of nebula and galaxies with my SeeStar and it really is amazing for a $500.00 scope! BTW, you are the reason I purchased a SeeStar Cuiv!
Mosaicmode is working really fine. I didn't use my seestar very often during this summer but since the update it's running again (in addition to bigger scope). Yesterday I got a nice picture from the bubble nebula with M52.
I tested it with Orion Nebula and wow I love it and as you said, we can use mosaic all the time with any object to get rid of the field rotation automatically 😃
Great stuff. I've been a subscriber of your channel for many years. Seeing your imaging from Tokyo is CRAZY!!! I've been a visual astronomer for many years and sold my equipment (Orion 10" Reflector EQ) a few years ago for various reasons. The quality and price point from this stuff has gotten so affordable and your showcase of it's ability is excellent. Thanks for your continued support to the hobby. Matt Hudson Valley, NY
What made a big difference to me with mine was a dew shield, not really for dew but it cuts out a lot of light pollution, turn the contrast to 8, and saturation to 25, The seestar has changed my life ive an 8 and 6 inch GoTo Dob, I haven't touched them since March. Enjoy! clear skies
I got a pretty decent image in Siril stacking a mosaic of individual files by setting the finish mosaic fits file as the reference file (or just rename it so it is the first file in the stack)
That's so smart actually haha, I would've never thought of that! Did the Siril stack end up being better in any meaningful way? I know for non-mosaic pics certain artifacts are prevented by using Siril but not sure if the same holds true for mosaic (haven't gotten the time to try it out yet)
i wish they would add a timer with auto shutoff.... i wish they would add a feature to "TURN ON" the seestar remotely from my ipad. Thank you for your excellent videos!
Fantastic video Cuiv, I have had tyhe S50 for a few weeks now and I have to say it has blown me away, this new update has made it even better, living here in the UK we have had very cloudy sky`s and I have to put up with high light pollution but even so I have seen images I thought I would only see in books lol, great channel and keep the video`s comming, Terry.
Great video as always! I saw this update in the App Store and was going to play with it the next time I had clear skies. Now I won’t have any trial and error!
watched your great video and tried M31 mosaic last night; worked great; I didn't realize that to get 88 min of data I had to image for 3 hours. Quite a lot of overhead time in processing and stacking.
I've recently purchased an ocean-crossing world-circling sailboat as a retirement home. That plan was long in the making. We'll live along the coasts of most of the continents and 100s if not 1000s of remote islands in both hemispheres. I've long dreamed of being able to assemble an astrophotography rig that could be brought along, but it has never really seemed feasible. Stuff one of these in a Pelican case and I think I would be set.
That sounds amazing! You should also have a look at the Seestar S30 or the Dwarf III for even more portability (and the D3 has equatorial mode, which makes a huge difference - I have all the links in the description)
Finally!!! Except now I have a little bit less motivation to start using my SWSA GTi and Rokinon 135mm lens I got for my Canon EOS Rebel 7. I’ve been impatiently waiting through the almost 3 month period without a single clear night (aka Florida in the summer) so I can start learning to image and process completely on my own. And now I just want to plop the Seestar out there and be lazy. Maybe I can manage to motivate myself by shooting a single target with the Seestar and the Canon to see a side by side comparison. Thanks so much for the overview. I can’t wait until you get your hands on the new Seestar S30! I trust your reviews (along with a few others I’m sure you could guess) more than almost anyone else in this space.
Amazing video thank you showing us how it works. I just can't wait to try it for myself. Weather is not good for me in uk at the moment. Looks I've got wait until next week now. Clear skies everyone
This looks like a great feature. I wonder if they're going to add this to the ASIAir. It of course already has a mosaic mode for setting up your framing but it would be nice if it would stack and combine the frames and give you an already stacked mosaic FIT file to process.
Thanks Cuiv, Ran quick test on M16 (because that was direction that I was pointing) and got partial mosaic after 10 minutes under Bortle 4.5 skies. One note of caution about S30 is that my comparison of S50 with DWARF II seems to show that extra aperture matters a lot. From 38 south, Andromeda is a challenge, but I cant wait to try S50 on Eta Carinae. Anyway, thanks.. Your video instructions made it dead easy to find and use the mosaic feature.
I just settled on the Dwarf 3 3 days ago because of the FOV. I had planned on buying it in 4 days when I got back from vacation. Guess I need to rethink it now.
Geek you are the best! Thank you for explaining in detail how to do this. One suggestion though: Can you please slow down a little bit when explaining or review so we can keep up with what you are doing? Otherwise I have to watch the video several times to learn. Thank you!
Something that I have found helpful is to click on the TH-cam Settings icon and put the playback speed to .75. This slows down the speech just enough to keep up with what's going on.
Hi Cuiv, do you use additional filters (ie a narrowband filter)on your S50 as you have to deal with the extreme light pollution, if not why not, maybe you could do some experiments with filters, this would be very interesting to see what you come up with. Love your channel well done, Paul
The S50 has an integrated semi-NB filter, and I do have already an entire video about using the Seestar with a 4nm bandpass HaOIII filter :D th-cam.com/video/MTbPTS4NQ_A/w-d-xo.html
I'm glad mosaic has finally come out of beta! My main complaint with beta mosaic was that there was a 15-20 second pause between each 10 second frame capture, so i only captured 20 seconds of data every minute. Has this improved with this new version?
I can’t wait to get home and try this out. Now I wish I would have brought my S50 with me, but I’m holding my new granddaughter in my arms, oh well, good trade off. 10 days to go get home and try out the update. Hopefully this will stop me from considering buying the S30.
Hey Cuiv! The new S30 looks to be a great little package too! I'm guessing you'll be receiving one for review very soon and I heartily look forward to seeing it my friend! Thanks as always Cuiv! Wes, Liverpool England.
Hi Cuiv great video as always. I am glad that this option is available now i was capturing the comet A3 and was thinking of a mosaic but now it's available in the update happy days
Changed my mind. Pleiades were in better position for me. I fit all of the major stars. Now the only thing missing is timer after which Seestar automatically closes and turns off. For example, I want to image for 3h and after that it would shut down automatically. If you can, could you mention it in your review please?
Thanks for this, a big help in understanding the Seestar. I’m torn between a Skywatcher Astrophotography setup, and the S50, this was due to a lack of belief it was this good, it seemed to good..lol Thank you..
@CuivTheLazyGeek thank you for the video. i have tried the mosaic mode directly after the software was available :) you are right. you can just use the stacked picture from seestar, but there is a negative side. i got satelite trail inside the picture, which you cannot get out. therefore a stacking of each picture is needed. would be nice, if you can show a how to or offer inforamtion, if there is a script available in the future.
Thanks Cuiv, that was a nice introduction. You have also demonstrated using the S50 in EQ mode for normal imaging. I will continue doing that for small targets because I am in a city light dome like you. Do you think EQ mounting will work with Framing, enabling longer sessions with less data loss? I can’t quite wrap my head around how the two approaches interact.
Starting looking to get another telescope, did not know smart telescopes even existed. I see they have a new model, I wonder if they will drop a new larger model?
i see the Seestar S30 is due to be released!! 30mm instead of 50mm and the same new sensor as the one on the Dwarf 3 - looking forward to your review!!!!
My best result todate is M45, previously not possible as a complete capture, excellent up grade, wonder what you make of the "Continuous Shooting " mode...
So I noticed your screen when you were building the mosaic on Andromeda said the recommended time was like 1.9 hours of exposure. I assume that is because you’re in a Bortle seven and if I was in a Bortle two or three, I would be able to get away with maybe 30 minutes on that target?
That was great but my idea for captureing a wide field with mozaik processing tech by using or modifying the stunt to equatorial form to avoid field rotation and less controller effort of the smart telescope to follow the target, good luck😊.
Auto enhancement after go to I had to disable. Comets the scope centers on comet not getting the entire tail so Ihave to adjust aim point. Nebulas there are sometimes bordering regions with fancy lighting I prefer to have in the picture. The frame adjustment is going to be nice and it's going to be great.
Tried mosaic on M31 last night and it worked great. I especially like the rotation feature. I will eventually be trying Markarian's Chain later this winter. Any thoughts on other good targets using mosaic?
Thank you for the very interesting little video. I am just starting to build my first mosaic of the Andromeda and all of a sudden a satellite Trail appeared in the composite. What can we do about these?
I wonder if having "Save each frame in enhancing" off also reduces processing time by some amount. When using mosaic mode I've found that if I spend 2 hours imaging I get about 1 hour of subs. Maybe having it off will reduce that disparity. I haven't investigated this because I haven't had a clear night for a while. 😞
I am looking into buying the s50 in the next two weeks. I just posted on Reddit my confusion with the new s30 that will be released possibly in mid-December. What is your thought,Don’t forget I’m just starting out . Great Video
Wasn't planning on anything based on a press release, unless there's something shocking or a worthwhile learning opportunity (like my Minicat 51 video) I tend not to prefer to actually test the product
Thanks kindly for the info and quick tutorial! I just saw and made the software update yesterday, of course it's raining today. Does it have any accommodations for directly taking multi-session mosaics? Or would that require external assembly of the mosaic from raw images captured over multiple nights?
havent had my s50 out in over a week. This is exciting and I'll get it out soon!!! Cloudy tonight though. You mentioned recommended shooting time, did they add a timer to automatically stop after a period of time?
Thanks, Cuiv! Can the mosaic be completed over multiple sessions?…shoot the Andromeda over a few nights? Or does mosaic require it be a one-and-done session?
Very good tutorial and function but I used the mosaic modus now for two nights on M31 and tried WBPP on it. Unfortunatly It just stacks a part of the galaxy. Can you please do another short video about mosaic stacking with PI? :) Thank you very much for all your great vids :)
I tried mosaic mode on the Pleiades and got a good picture. There is no such thing as a free lunch however and the image had significant grain due to the lower signal to noise ratio. Also it seemed as if the battery capacity was reduced due to the mosaic repositioning. Next time I will have an external power source ready. The SeeStar suggested 1.9 hours for my framing. I let it go for over 3 hours, but only had about 1 hour of stacked exposure. This target was high overhead in my location so there must have been a lot of rejected frames. Cuiv - in your video, you suggest letting the SeeStar run while you are sleeping. What happens to the image if the scope runs out of power during a long exposure? I dont think an unlimited power supply would help since a brightening sky could ruin the image. Your thoughts please.
Hello Cuiv! Thank you for your content and contributions to Astrophotography! I have an unrelated question to this video. I am working on setting up my rig for meridian flip, however I have to set the slew limits ~10-15 + deg each side. How does this effect target tracking during a meridian flip? I'm sure that my question is probably equipment specific however I have no experience with this yet and an explanation on the relationship between slew limit, meridian flip, and image tracking would be awesome. Some questions 1. I assume that the target cannot be immediately obtained after a meridian flip if the slew limits are above 0. Is this correct? 2. Do mounts generally wait (at the slew limit) before / after meridian flip until the target is back in sink to begin tracking again? I welcome comments and info from anyone here who can help. - Thanks
@@CuivTheLazyGeek LOVE that video and can see the value. Do you think there are certain Seestar weaknesses that need to be overcome with specific PI processes? For instance the Seestar videos lock "pop" and seem a little flat and bland. What can be done to overcome that?
@@CuivTheLazyGeek Plus there seems to perhaps be a way to stack in WBPP by using the Seestar stacked .fit as the reference frame. That might be a good topic to explore in addition to best PI processes for Seestar.
Great new feature! Maybe theres a way to tell the seestar to stay in the target for longer? If it says "ok, 1.5 hrs needed to capture", can you tell it: "make it 8hr"?
Hi Cuiv, thanks for the video. The mosaic mode works fine for me. It is really a progress and using it is extremely simple. How do you process the fit-file (which software)?
The mosaic mode is quite limited at the moment, and overall I have a quite negative opinion of it. I've been collecting data for a few days to see exactly what it can do under ideal conditions (bortle 4, 0-10% cloud cover, new moon, perfectly level, letting the sensor temperature stabilize befor start up). The average efficiency ranges from 48-52% on the 2X panel. It takes at least 3.5 hours to fill the entire canvas, but even then the amount of information in the corners is very low. Also, I think there are still some software bugs as the error rate in certain panels is skyrocketing. There are sections where the efficiency drops down to 10-30% for seemingly no reason. As well as the extra difficulty in restacking (which I think there is now some workaround for), which in some cases would be very useful as seestar automatically corrects something in the image which occasionally leads to pretty bad results.
What about continuous shooting mode which is also a feature in the latest release? Is that a useful feature? Problem I encountered so far is that quite a number of sub frames are dropped due to all kind of reasons. The continuous shooting mode skips the enhancing process resulting in a higher acceptance of the sub frames when storage of the single sub frames is enabled. The user can do the stacking process in Siril allthough the Seestar still stacks the sub frames to produce a final fits file when the user stops observing.
@Cuiv, The Lazy Geek I'm researching Seestar S50 and the Dwarf 3. Taking this mosaic software update into consideration, do you recommend S50 or Dwarf 3? I was leaning toward the D3 but still haven't decided. The D3 is just so conveniently small. *Thank you for these videos!*
Maybe a silly question ... but how do you control the number of images on each individual frame in the mosaic? Or does it start framing over and over again?
Does this mitigate the "need" for an eq mount? Also, would I still have to trick the scope into thinking it's in the northpole? I dont have a Seestar yet (planned late nov/early dec) so doing homework so-to-speak
Hey man. Great video. I was using the beta version. Not much is different. In beta you could zoom out to an even bigger mosaic. I have a question though that i cant seem to find the answer to. What is the continuous shooting feature and what does it do? When you are in the screen that shows the veiw of from the telescope up in the right hand corner are 3 dots. In there is this feature. Now sure what it dose. But its new. Great video and thank you
Unfortunately My Seestar seems to be broken after 1 year. No amount of resets or changing to sturdy tripods or going to different locations can help it. It's unable to track for more than 2-3 minutes for some reason. I don't know if it's mechanical problem or not, all I know it has plastic wheels inside, maybe something broke. What I really wish they would implement is checking the framing after a certain amount of time and re-adjust automatically and plate solve. And that's even an easier script than this mosaic. That would be the game changer!
When sky clears, Please let us know what is ratio of exposure time to the time of taking mosaic (there is information that exposure time is 1/3 and 2/3 are wasted on real time mosaic composing )
Cool video. Is the exposure time accurate? Currently without mosaic mode mine may run for 30 minutes for example, but only record 10 minutes. It is a bortle 5 area. Thanx for the info.
Can anyone answer this for me? Can S50 be used for citizen science, exoplanet transit observations like Unistellar scopes? What is the limiting magnitude on the S50?
@@CuivTheLazyGeek great many thanks. would be great if you can also relate to it not just as a main or alternative scope but rather as a travel companion (which i know you did with the dwarf...)
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I come to SeeStar from years of “traditional” astrophotography. At 83, I made the move to the S50 because I not long wanted the hassle of using a full rig. I’ve been amazed and now, with mosaic, I’m even more impressed. Thanks for the video.
I love this little scope but it is affecting my other astrophtography. I am so lazy, every night its like, do I want to haul all that gear out and set up or carry this little briefcase telescope whereever i want and be running in 5 minutes. I know i will get better imaging with the bigger setups. I have found tht the seestar imaging is "good enough". I mean, none of us are shooting for publication, how many images are there of M31 for example. Great to share with family and friends and public partys.. They make a 80 or 100, same features, im all over it and selling everything else. Great Channel
I understand where you're coming from, I find that these days I mostly use my SY f2 135 or Red Cat51 with my Star Adventurer GTi because I can leave everything set up and just take it outside when there is a break in the clouds. Using the ASIair mini it takes no time at all to polar align, I can be imagining within five minutes. At nearly seventy I'm getting too old to be outside lugging heavy mounts etc around in the middle of winter. If I hadn't already got a Red Cat51 and camera I would definitely buy a SeeStar S50.
If ZWO add an EQ feature to the SeeStar I think many more people will follow your example. I do have one scope semi permanently set up outside, but some nights, especially if it's forecast to cloud over later on or there is a chance of rain I just leave it covered up and use the lighter rigs.
I have the same issue, love the ability to image when I want to and no longer drag a trailer of equipment out to our club's dark site. I have done more astronomy in 2024 than I have in the last 10 years.
Good comments here! From several people It's nice to read the positive And beneficial things about the seestar, and it's kind of fun and different tool for astrophotography
Same here,!
Same phenomenon here hahaha specially lazy on taking darks and flats after a session I'm prefering to take out the Seestar instead and that's it 😅 And I can shoot even on cloudy or rainy season if I see a hole in the clouds, take quickly the Seestar shoot and bring it back indoors before it rains in 2 mins.😆
Sell all your gear and get an orion😊😊😊
I just tried it on m31 last night and gave it 45 min. I was amazed how well it worked! I feel like I have an all new telescope! It’s magic watching the frames overlap, causing lines and seams and as it keeps overlaying, those blend in and vanish. I hope zwo keeps up the great support for the s50 as they add the s30 and future models. I have also been checking their light pollution map with a bortal meter and it’s quite accurate. I’m so impressed with zwo. Thanks Cuiv for your work too!
Yep, I'm really happy they added this!
20 years ago I would have scoffed at this and wanted to do everything manually. Now, I'm just like "Seestar, take a good pic of this thing in the sky" and I sit back and relax. I'm going to buy one because it really makes life easy and I'm all about that nowadays.
Yep - it's all about what each of us enjoys!
I am so psyched to try this out! I've been loving my S50 even when it crops out so many items. I can't imagine how much more I'll love it now.
I have gazed on a number of nebula and galaxies with my SeeStar and it really is amazing for a $500.00 scope! BTW, you are the reason I purchased a SeeStar Cuiv!
That's awesome, it's such a cool little scope!
Mosaicmode is working really fine. I didn't use my seestar very often during this summer but since the update it's running again (in addition to bigger scope). Yesterday I got a nice picture from the bubble nebula with M52.
Nice! It feels like a different scope somehow
There were so many andromedas posted this last week on the s50 facebook group, we all had the same idea 😄
It's that time of the year ;)
I tested it with Orion Nebula and wow I love it and as you said, we can use mosaic all the time with any object to get rid of the field rotation automatically 😃
Yep! We do pay in SNR since there is no free lunch, but still!
Great stuff.
I've been a subscriber of your channel for many years. Seeing your imaging from Tokyo is CRAZY!!!
I've been a visual astronomer for many years and sold my equipment (Orion 10" Reflector EQ) a few years ago for various reasons.
The quality and price point from this stuff has gotten so affordable and your showcase of it's ability is excellent.
Thanks for your continued support to the hobby.
Matt
Hudson Valley, NY
Thanks, Matt! It's great to hear from a long-time viewer - I always try to show what's possible even from light-polluted cities like Tokyo!
I just bought a Seestar s50 - as you posted this video! Great timing, considering I bought it after watching some of your previous videos :)
What made a big difference to me with mine was a dew shield, not really for dew but it cuts out a lot of light pollution, turn the contrast to 8, and saturation to 25, The seestar has changed my life ive an 8 and 6 inch GoTo Dob, I haven't touched them since March. Enjoy! clear skies
Congrats! I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun with it!
I got a pretty decent image in Siril stacking a mosaic of individual files by setting the finish mosaic fits file as the reference file (or just rename it so it is the first file in the stack)
That's so smart actually haha, I would've never thought of that! Did the Siril stack end up being better in any meaningful way? I know for non-mosaic pics certain artifacts are prevented by using Siril but not sure if the same holds true for mosaic (haven't gotten the time to try it out yet)
Nice! Well done!!
Would love to see another comparison between the Seestar and Dwarf 3. Thanks for all your work!
i wish they would add a timer with auto shutoff.... i wish they would add a feature to "TURN ON" the seestar remotely from my ipad. Thank you for your excellent videos!
Now we are getting overly lazy 😜 fck it sure why not man
Yep - the vespera basically has this: you can plan multiple targets in a night with mosaics, and even have multi-night stacks, it's a bit insane!
Fantastic video Cuiv, I have had tyhe S50 for a few weeks now and I have to say it has blown me away, this new update has made it even better, living here in the UK we have had very cloudy sky`s and I have to put up with high light pollution but even so I have seen images I thought I would only see in books lol, great channel and keep the video`s comming, Terry.
Great video as always! I saw this update in the App Store and was going to play with it the next time I had clear skies. Now I won’t have any trial and error!
Enjoy it Cody!!
Mosaic is a game changer! I have been loving it!
Uuuu my seestar may be flying with me to tenerife in next couple of weeks 😮 I've had it with UK weather😂
I'm in Lanzarote with mine now. It's been great.
Hahaha that sounds like a great plan!!
watched your great video and tried M31 mosaic last night; worked great; I didn't realize that to get 88 min of data I had to image for 3 hours. Quite a lot of overhead time in processing and stacking.
I've recently purchased an ocean-crossing world-circling sailboat as a retirement home. That plan was long in the making.
We'll live along the coasts of most of the continents and 100s if not 1000s of remote islands in both hemispheres. I've long dreamed of being able to assemble an astrophotography rig that could be brought along, but it has never really seemed feasible.
Stuff one of these in a Pelican case and I think I would be set.
That sounds amazing! You should also have a look at the Seestar S30 or the Dwarf III for even more portability (and the D3 has equatorial mode, which makes a huge difference - I have all the links in the description)
@@CuivTheLazyGeek It's a pretty big boat. I will be watching for a S70 or 80 with a proper EQ mode. I've got a couple years before we "leave".
Finally!!! Except now I have a little bit less motivation to start using my SWSA GTi and Rokinon 135mm lens I got for my Canon EOS Rebel 7. I’ve been impatiently waiting through the almost 3 month period without a single clear night (aka Florida in the summer) so I can start learning to image and process completely on my own. And now I just want to plop the Seestar out there and be lazy.
Maybe I can manage to motivate myself by shooting a single target with the Seestar and the Canon to see a side by side comparison. Thanks so much for the overview. I can’t wait until you get your hands on the new Seestar S30! I trust your reviews (along with a few others I’m sure you could guess) more than almost anyone else in this space.
Amazing video thank you showing us how it works. I just can't wait to try it for myself. Weather is not good for me in uk at the moment. Looks I've got wait until next week now. Clear skies everyone
This looks like a great feature. I wonder if they're going to add this to the ASIAir. It of course already has a mosaic mode for setting up your framing but it would be nice if it would stack and combine the frames and give you an already stacked mosaic FIT file to process.
Nice work, Cuiv, as always. I just got my S50 today and will be testing on a clear night.
Enjoy!
Great information as usual, thanks for making it easy to understand how to use this awesome new function.
Glad you found it helpful!
Wow, two great videos in quick succession, thanks for sharing.
Always a pleasure!
Thanks Cuiv, Ran quick test on M16 (because that was direction that I was pointing) and got partial mosaic after 10 minutes under Bortle 4.5 skies. One note of caution about S30 is that my comparison of S50 with DWARF II seems to show that extra aperture matters a lot. From 38 south, Andromeda is a challenge, but I cant wait to try S50 on Eta Carinae. Anyway, thanks.. Your video instructions made it dead easy to find and use the mosaic feature.
I just settled on the Dwarf 3 3 days ago because of the FOV. I had planned on buying it in 4 days when I got back from vacation. Guess I need to rethink it now.
I'm still getting Dwarf 3 cause of EQ mode, love the seestar though
The EQ mode, portability, and wider FOV still make it worth it!
Geek you are the best! Thank you for explaining in detail how to do this. One suggestion though: Can you please slow down a little bit when explaining or review so we can keep up with what you are doing? Otherwise I have to watch the video several times to learn. Thank you!
Something that I have found helpful is to click on the TH-cam Settings icon and put the playback speed to .75. This slows down the speech just enough to keep up with what's going on.
Hi Cuiv, do you use additional filters (ie a narrowband filter)on your S50 as you have to deal with the extreme light pollution, if not why not, maybe you could do some experiments with filters, this would be very interesting to see what you come up with. Love your channel well done, Paul
The S50 has an integrated semi-NB filter, and I do have already an entire video about using the Seestar with a 4nm bandpass HaOIII filter :D th-cam.com/video/MTbPTS4NQ_A/w-d-xo.html
Can you stop mosaic mode and turn off and resume /continue the next day on same object?
I'm glad mosaic has finally come out of beta! My main complaint with beta mosaic was that there was a 15-20 second pause between each 10 second frame capture, so i only captured 20 seconds of data every minute. Has this improved with this new version?
I can’t wait to get home and try this out. Now I wish I would have brought my S50 with me, but I’m holding my new granddaughter in my arms, oh well, good trade off. 10 days to go get home and try out the update. Hopefully this will stop me from considering buying the S30.
Granddaughters are a good reason to leave the telescope behind :)
Hey Cuiv! The new S30 looks to be a great little package too! I'm guessing you'll be receiving one for review very soon and I heartily look forward to seeing it my friend!
Thanks as always Cuiv!
Wes, Liverpool England.
Fingers crossed I get my hands on one!
@@CuivTheLazyGeek any thoughts on the sensor in the S30 vs S50? trying to decide on the S30 (already have the S50). TIA
My god thanks so much! I was so looking forward to this feature. Finally I can image Andromeda with its full glory 😊
Enjoy the new feature!
Hi Cuiv great video as always. I am glad that this option is available now i was capturing the comet A3 and was thinking of a mosaic but now it's available in the update happy days
Thanks for the video. I am going to install it right away and going to try it on a target in ORION.😃
Enjoy!
Changed my mind. Pleiades were in better position for me. I fit all of the major stars. Now the only thing missing is timer after which Seestar automatically closes and turns off. For example, I want to image for 3h and after that it would shut down automatically. If you can, could you mention it in your review please?
Thank you, so I can close the app and go to sleep, love that!
Many thanks. I am waiting my seestars for christmass !
Hope you enjoy it!
Cuiv...you rock once again! Thanks for the video!!
Thanks so much!
I knew new video from you is coming up as soon as we had a clear night two days ago 😂 Got straight 7hrs on M45 myself.
I have some hopes for tonight, but the wind might be strong :/
That means I don't need to buy Seestar S30 for wider FOV 😊
BTW SeestarS30 is ready for pre-order since yesterday. 2000rmb
Yep, I hope to get my hands on one for review!
Thanks. This is a very useful video.
Loving the new feature. First thing I shot was M31 .
Thanks for this, a big help in understanding the Seestar. I’m torn between a Skywatcher Astrophotography setup, and the S50, this was due to a lack of belief it was this good, it seemed to good..lol Thank you..
Glad this is helpful!
This is amazing!
@CuivTheLazyGeek thank you for the video. i have tried the mosaic mode directly after the software was available :) you are right. you can just use the stacked picture from seestar, but there is a negative side. i got satelite trail inside the picture, which you cannot get out. therefore a stacking of each picture is needed. would be nice, if you can show a how to or offer inforamtion, if there is a script available in the future.
It really will enhance the experience of using the Seestar, all I need now are clear skies!
Yes, we need a clear skies generator!
@@CuivTheLazyGeek the inventor of that could make a fortune!
Great video on this update.
Thanks!
Thanks Cuiv, that was a nice introduction. You have also demonstrated using the S50 in EQ mode for normal imaging. I will continue doing that for small targets because I am in a city light dome like you. Do you think EQ mounting will work with Framing, enabling longer sessions with less data loss? I can’t quite wrap my head around how the two approaches interact.
In theory this should work with EQ mode since we are deceiving the scope - the two methods can be complementary
Starting looking to get another telescope, did not know smart telescopes even existed. I see they have a new model, I wonder if they will drop a new larger model?
i see the Seestar S30 is due to be released!! 30mm instead of 50mm and the same new sensor as the one on the Dwarf 3 - looking forward to your review!!!!
I think the sensor is different, but I'm looking forward to testing it!
@@CuivTheLazyGeek Yes, the sensor is reportedly the same as the new one in the Dwarf 3 with 8mp
@@NJM1948 S30 is IMX662, Dwarf III is IMX678!
@@NJM1948 Nope
My best result todate is M45, previously not possible as a complete capture, excellent up grade, wonder what you make of the "Continuous Shooting " mode...
So I noticed your screen when you were building the mosaic on Andromeda said the recommended time was like 1.9 hours of exposure. I assume that is because you’re in a Bortle seven and if I was in a Bortle two or three, I would be able to get away with maybe 30 minutes on that target?
That was great but my idea for captureing a wide field with mozaik processing tech by using or modifying the stunt to equatorial form to avoid field rotation and less controller effort of the smart telescope to follow the target, good luck😊.
Yeah that would be even better!
Auto enhancement after go to I had to disable. Comets the scope centers on comet not getting the entire tail so Ihave to adjust aim point. Nebulas there are sometimes bordering regions with fancy lighting I prefer to have in the picture. The frame adjustment is going to be nice and it's going to be great.
Tried mosaic on M31 last night and it worked great. I especially like the rotation feature. I will eventually be trying Markarian's Chain later this winter. Any thoughts on other good targets using mosaic?
Thank you for the very interesting little video. I am just starting to build my first mosaic of the Andromeda and all of a sudden a satellite Trail appeared in the composite. What can we do about these?
As a teacher running an astronomy club the new feature I like is guest mode!
Yesss that one is really neat too!
I wonder if having "Save each frame in enhancing" off also reduces processing time by some amount. When using mosaic mode I've found that if I spend 2 hours imaging I get about 1 hour of subs. Maybe having it off will reduce that disparity. I haven't investigated this because I haven't had a clear night for a while. 😞
It's not impossible, but I think the overall issue is tracking...
I am looking into buying the s50 in the next two weeks. I just posted on Reddit my confusion with the new s30 that will be released possibly in mid-December. What is your thought,Don’t forget I’m just starting out . Great Video
Difficult to say yet! And don't forget the Dwarf III!
Thanks Cuiv for an other great video. Are there any advantages to using mosaic mode with the Seestar in EQUATORIAL mode?
Wider FOV, lower SNR - but more efficient than in Alt-Az
Hi Cuiv. Are you going to post anything about the S30? I would appreciate hearing your initial thoughts based on the press release info.
Wasn't planning on anything based on a press release, unless there's something shocking or a worthwhile learning opportunity (like my Minicat 51 video) I tend not to prefer to actually test the product
Thanks kindly for the info and quick tutorial! I just saw and made the software update yesterday, of course it's raining today. Does it have any accommodations for directly taking multi-session mosaics? Or would that require external assembly of the mosaic from raw images captured over multiple nights?
These Chinese are *Amazing* !
Thanks for the info. It's very helpful.
My pleasure!
havent had my s50 out in over a week. This is exciting and I'll get it out soon!!! Cloudy tonight though. You mentioned recommended shooting time, did they add a timer to automatically stop after a period of time?
Thanks, Cuiv! Can the mosaic be completed over multiple sessions?…shoot the Andromeda over a few nights? Or does mosaic require it be a one-and-done session?
I think it requires a one and done session..!
@@CuivTheLazyGeek And what about stacking separate nights sessions?
Very good tutorial and function but I used the mosaic modus now for two nights on M31 and tried WBPP on it. Unfortunatly It just stacks a part of the galaxy. Can you please do another short video about mosaic stacking with PI? :) Thank you very much for all your great vids :)
Now s50 has this update. Which would be the best buy. Dwarf 3 or s50
Upcoming video on the topic :)
I tried mosaic mode on the Pleiades and got a good picture. There is no such thing as a free lunch however and the image had significant grain due to the lower signal to noise ratio. Also it seemed as if the battery capacity was reduced due to the mosaic repositioning. Next time I will have an external power source ready.
The SeeStar suggested 1.9 hours for my framing. I let it go for over 3 hours, but only had about 1 hour of stacked exposure. This target was high overhead in my location so there must have been a lot of rejected frames.
Cuiv - in your video, you suggest letting the SeeStar run while you are sleeping. What happens to the image if the scope runs out of power during a long exposure? I dont think an unlimited power supply would help since a brightening sky could ruin the image. Your thoughts please.
Indeed one of our astronomy club members who owns a Seastar got the firmware update yesterday. (1st of November 2024)
Hello Cuiv! Thank you for your content and contributions to Astrophotography!
I have an unrelated question to this video. I am working on setting up my rig for meridian flip, however I have to set the slew limits ~10-15 + deg each side. How does this effect target tracking during a meridian flip? I'm sure that my question is probably equipment specific however I have no experience with this yet and an explanation on the relationship between slew limit, meridian flip, and image tracking would be awesome.
Some questions
1. I assume that the target cannot be immediately obtained after a meridian flip if the slew limits are above 0. Is this correct?
2. Do mounts generally wait (at the slew limit) before / after meridian flip until the target is back in sink to begin tracking again?
I welcome comments and info from anyone here who can help. - Thanks
I know you have a processing video but would love to see one using PI on nebulae and galaxy images that are straight out of the S50.
The PixInsight Ultimate Guide video can be used exactly for that purpose!
@@CuivTheLazyGeek LOVE that video and can see the value. Do you think there are certain Seestar weaknesses that need to be overcome with specific PI processes? For instance the Seestar videos lock "pop" and seem a little flat and bland. What can be done to overcome that?
@@CuivTheLazyGeek Plus there seems to perhaps be a way to stack in WBPP by using the Seestar stacked .fit as the reference frame. That might be a good topic to explore in addition to best PI processes for Seestar.
Great new feature! Maybe theres a way to tell the seestar to stay in the target for longer? If it says "ok, 1.5 hrs needed to capture", can you tell it: "make it 8hr"?
Yes, you just let it run, it will keep imaging!
Would you recommend this over the dwarf 3 ?
Hi Cuiv, thanks for the video. The mosaic mode works fine for me. It is really a progress and using it is extremely simple. How do you process the fit-file (which software)?
I used pix insight, basically following my own ultimate guide to pixinsight video
Thanks, Cuiv
I like it! 😊
So do I!
I can’t make up my mind! S50 or Dwarf3!!!🤯😀
Both? lol Yeah it's a tough choice!
Cuiv, what is your opinion on the s30 being dropped? Will you be comparing? I want to buy an s50 but now im unsure if the s30 is the better option?
I'll definitely want to get my hands on it!
@@CuivTheLazyGeek I guess I'll wait until you get one and can do a video then...
Pretty amazing for a $500 imaging setup... Thanks, Cuiv! What's your take on the new (smaller) Seestar S30? Only $350!
I'll need to test it first :)
The mosaic mode is quite limited at the moment, and overall I have a quite negative opinion of it.
I've been collecting data for a few days to see exactly what it can do under ideal conditions (bortle 4, 0-10% cloud cover, new moon, perfectly level, letting the sensor temperature stabilize befor start up).
The average efficiency ranges from 48-52% on the 2X panel. It takes at least 3.5 hours to fill the entire canvas, but even then the amount of information in the corners is very low.
Also, I think there are still some software bugs as the error rate in certain panels is skyrocketing. There are sections where the efficiency drops down to 10-30% for seemingly no reason.
As well as the extra difficulty in restacking (which I think there is now some workaround for), which in some cases would be very useful as seestar automatically corrects something in the image which occasionally leads to pretty bad results.
Interesting, I will need to look at the success rate for each panel - this time I just let it be and slept!
What about continuous shooting mode which is also a feature in the latest release? Is that a useful feature? Problem I encountered so far is that quite a number of sub frames are dropped due to all kind of reasons. The continuous shooting mode skips the enhancing process resulting in a higher acceptance of the sub frames when storage of the single sub frames is enabled. The user can do the stacking process in Siril allthough the Seestar still stacks the sub frames to produce a final fits file when the user stops observing.
@Cuiv, The Lazy Geek I'm researching Seestar S50 and the Dwarf 3. Taking this mosaic software update into consideration, do you recommend S50 or Dwarf 3? I was leaning toward the D3 but still haven't decided. The D3 is just so conveniently small. *Thank you for these videos!*
I don't recommend either over the other, but if I personally had to choose only one, it would likely be the Dwarf III
Maybe a silly question ... but how do you control the number of images on each individual frame in the mosaic? Or does it start framing over and over again?
Does this mitigate the "need" for an eq mount? Also, would I still have to trick the scope into thinking it's in the northpole? I dont have a Seestar yet (planned late nov/early dec) so doing homework so-to-speak
Hey man. Great video. I was using the beta version. Not much is different. In beta you could zoom out to an even bigger mosaic. I have a question though that i cant seem to find the answer to. What is the continuous shooting feature and what does it do? When you are in the screen that shows the veiw of from the telescope up in the right hand corner are 3 dots. In there is this feature. Now sure what it dose. But its new. Great video and thank you
I haven't looked into that yet, probably to force the Seestar to save every single frame rather than just the frames it deems good enough to stack?
Think you could explain the guest mode on the app?
Thanks Cuiv! As some others have asked, can mosaic be used with your previously described way of equatorial imaging?
I haven't tried, but since we are effectively deceiving the scope, I feel like it should work!
@@CuivTheLazyGeek Thanks! Will give it a try! Let us know if you try this as well please
I notice on version 2.10, it's less buggy and the native S50 deep sky stacking works better.
Nice!
Waiting for you to review s30
It's on my list!
Unfortunately My Seestar seems to be broken after 1 year. No amount of resets or changing to sturdy tripods or going to different locations can help it. It's unable to track for more than 2-3 minutes for some reason. I don't know if it's mechanical problem or not, all I know it has plastic wheels inside, maybe something broke.
What I really wish they would implement is checking the framing after a certain amount of time and re-adjust automatically and plate solve. And that's even an easier script than this mosaic. That would be the game changer!
When sky clears, Please let us know what is ratio of exposure time to the time of taking mosaic (there is information that exposure time is 1/3 and 2/3 are wasted on real time mosaic composing )
Yeah I need to figure this out
Ah, very good news! Now if only those pesky clouds can go away (and stay away).
Yeah, that would be nice!
Did you spot the deliberate error in the S50 Sky Atlas? It mi's-identified M110 as M31! (about 4:30)
Ha! Interesting!
Cool video. Is the exposure time accurate? Currently without mosaic mode mine may run for 30 minutes for example, but only record 10 minutes. It is a bortle 5 area. Thanx for the info.
It depends on the area of the sky your target is, how well the tracking did, whether wind or vibration interrupted the frame, etc.
Does it mean the lack of EQ mode on the S50 doesn't matter anymore? like this will solve the field rotation problem?
No, the the lack of EQ mode cant in no way be solved by the mosaic that brings a lot of drawbacks. Fortunately the DWARF 3 has EQ mode.
Can anyone answer this for me? Can S50 be used for citizen science, exoplanet transit observations like Unistellar scopes? What is the limiting magnitude on the S50?
Cuiv- simple question maybe not a simple answer- Seestar or Dwarf3? thanks
Will make a video on the topic
@@CuivTheLazyGeek great many thanks. would be great if you can also relate to it not just as a main or alternative scope but rather as a travel companion (which i know you did with the dwarf...)