Next comet

I tried one more time with Comet Lemmon last night, and it seems the window has passed to get anything better than what I got two nights ago. The SeeStar is going back in its case to await the next comet. I did two DSOs last night after the comet set just to explore new capabilities. The M31 Andromeda image is a cropped mosaic of stacked 4K images, and the other one is a cropped 4K image of M81 Bode's Galaxy. I don't think they are any better than what I got last year shot at the native resolution. I have concluded that the SeeStar is an easy-to-use telescope for the occasional comet. I have some more advanced telescope equipment that, to be honest, I really haven't taken the time to learn how to use. When deciding on how to spend my golden years, they are more likely to be spent in a greenhouse in the daylight rather than fumbling around in the dark and cold.

Comet Lemmon

I haven't had the Seestar out this year. Let's face it, once you get images of a few familiar galaxies and nebulas, there's not much else it can do. So it sits in its case waiting for something new to come along, such as a comet. Last night it was cloudy on the horizon and I got a bad image of Comet C2025 A6 Lemmon. Tonight it was better and I'm showing two images here. The first one was just before it set behind Red Lodge Mountain, which is the black area along the bottom. The second one is from a few minutes earlier and was the longest exposure time I managed to get. There are a lot of meteors or satellites or something streaking across this image. There was one in the first image, which I removed in Photoshop.

Through the binoculars, the comet was a faint smudge, aided slightly by averted vision. I could not see it without the binoculars.

The first image was downloaded later from the telescope and does not have the watermark. I though this version was a bit better than the phone version. The second image was downloaded from my phone and has the watermark. There is a large FIT file, the equivalent of a RAW file. But it has to be edited in a specialized program such as Siril because Photoshop can't load FIT files. Last year I found out this is not a straightforward process, so I decided any improvement over the automatically-generated JPG images was incremental at best and usually not worth messing with. Both images were processed from the JPG files in Photoshop to increase contrast and reduce noise.

ZWO has not released an upgrade to the Seestar S50 since I got mine last year, but has issued a firmware update with 4K capability. If the weather is decent, I will try one more time on Sunday, making sure that 4K is enabled. The native resolution still is 1920x1080. The upgrade bumps the image size up to 3840x2160 using Drizzle processing. From the three minutes of internet research I did, you need lots of images to stack to make this meaningful. Since comet exposures are not very long, 3-5 minutes, I don't know if it will make a difference for those. For deep-sky long exposures, maybe it will do something. (BTW, it seems the only competitor to the S50 at the price point of approximately $500 is still the Dwarf 3, although you could also consider ZWO's own S30 for about $100 less.)

This image of M27, the Dumbbell Nebula, is slightly better than the one I posted last year on my web site. This one was taken after I switched the setting to 4K, which I figured out was what I wanted to do two hours after the comet set. This is a 34-minute exposure.

It is now possible, with the proper wedge, to use the Seestar in equatorial mode rather than Alt-Az. This enables longer exposures of deep sky objects. I could try my old Meade tripod which has an adjustable wedge. I don't know how complicated the setup procedure is.

Two nights ago, I didn't get the Seestar out in time for the comet, but the TV anchor made a passing remark about the Northern Lights. I set the 6D out with the wide angle lens and figured, if nothing else, I would get star trails. There were a couple images in the middle of the night that showed a hint of the aurora way off to the north, but very difficult to see and not worth posting. So here are the star trails. I'm not going to do anything else with this image so didn't try to edit out the satellite and airplane trails. Exactly eight hours, 930 thirty-second exposures. For those who want to do the math, 930*30/3600 is only 7 hours 44 minutes. There's also the one second the intervalometer needs in between exposures, and yes, that adds up to 16 minutes over eight hours.

Recent trailcam images

I neglected the National Forest cameras all summer and finally got out there. The highlight would have to be a young bear climbing a tree as his mother patrols the ground on July 22. The final shot of the bear sequence is a few minutes later from a different camera on the same tree facing the opposite direction. There's also a bobcat, a moose pair and the usual deer.

I have four cameras spread along a trail from the bridge to the miner's cabin, and a fifth set up on a side trail. It was difficult to put the fifth camera on that trail because there are no well-positioned trees, so I finally just drove a stake into the ground. It is a frequent route followed by a couple of coyotes, as well as rabbits and the local deer.

Aurora fail

There were projections that the Northern Lights might reach as far as southern Montana, so I set up despite the clouds. The images were overexposed, in part due to the full moon and in part due to the f/2.8 setting. Upon further review, I shot at f/5.6 last year. The only thing I really learned from this star trails stack is that the clouds move fast enough to show visible gaps, even though exposures are only one second apart.

Off the leash

I had the 1D set up trying to get birds landing on the birdhouse when flickers came into the yard. I decided to see how skittish they were and ventured out into the yard with the R5/100-400. To my surprise, they were fairly approachable. After two days, I determined that there is a family of four, and the adults are still feeding the fledglings to some extent.

I did get this motion-triggered shot of a magpie with the 1D, but I fear it may be giving up the ghost after 21 years. Many of the images from the past few days have a diagonal thick black blob covering up much of the image. Another anomoly is a horizontal light shape across most of the image. That is what can be seen here behind the magpie. I'll do some more testing, but I fear the worst. It is not worth fixing. It might finally get put up on eBay as a "parts" camera.

Fledgling (left) getting fed by Dad.

The adult male has the red chin.

Overnight

I turned off the sprinklers and left the 1D/70-200 out overnight. I didn't get much, but this sparrow was at 5:49 AM, and the robin four hours later. The background blur shows the difference in lighting conditions. The sparrow is wide open at f/4, and the robin is at f/13. As the day went along the wind came up and the waving grass started setting off the motion detector, even though I have it aimed high. Just before I stopped the camera, another sparrow came by at 11:49 with a grasshopper in its beak.

I need to construct a small tube that fits over the motion detector so it doesn't get distracted by waving grass. There are wings on the sides that can be adjusted, but nothing at the top or bottom. I have taped cardboard to the top, but it is not an easy fit on the bottom, which is where I need it for this. If I can get this done, I won't have so many wasted shots and will feel better about using one of my better cameras. The 1D fired off 760 wasted shots in the two hours between the robin and the second sparrow.

To be clear, magpies, robins and sparrows are fine for test subjects. What I really want perched on the fence are bluebirds, meadowlarks and flickers.

Post

To get out of the bird bath rut, I focused the 1D and 70-200 at 200 on a fencepost in my back yard. It is located between the two bird houses, which are unoccupied but which still get traffic from bluebirds and others. When I set it out this morning, there was a meadowlark on the fence further to the north, and a robin and magpie closer, so I had hope. The images during the day just had a few blurry birds, but I had better luck right at sunset. This magpie caught the light in the first two images, but clouds on the horizon ruined the ambiance for the next two. I decided to turn off my lawn sprinklers and let the camera sit out there all night in hopes of getting some early morning shots. The alternative is to get up really early to set out the camera, and I am not going to do that.

The camera was set at 70mm, 250 ISO, TV priority with 1/500th of a second. On the lit images, the f/stop was a respectable 7.1. As it got darker, that dropped to f/5-5.6.