Now what?

We got a few hours of sunshine today so I was back out there with the Lunt 50. Without adjusting the tuning from yesterday, there was a large filament visible near the two sunspots, and some incredible prominences at the edge in the same region. I wish I could show a picture of it. I was able to get the ZWO computer and camera to give me a preview image today, but was never able to get it in focus. I don't think it will rack in far enough. It makes no sense to me. The Cloudy Nights forums talk about using this camera on this telescope.

I decided to take a step back and see if I could get the combo to work on my regular Televue 85 scope with a white light solar filter. First I shot a straight through image with the Canon EOS M100, shown below. But I was unable to bring the ZWO camera into focus either straight through or through the diagonal. If the M100 can be brought to focus, I shouldn't have to rack back much more than an inch to get the ZWO to the same focal plane. It's just physics.

I even tried shooting my camera phone handheld through an eyepiece, and that didn't work. (I have a eyepiece attachment somewhere.) I don't know what to do at this point. Tomorrow I may try focusing the ZWO/Televue on the nearby mountain. If that doesn't work...I don't know what that would mean. Next, I will probably try my Scopetronix attachment which is a rather heavy piece of metal that allows shooting through an eyepiece. That should work with the EOS cameras, but I'm not sure how I will attach the ZWO camera to it. At this point I just want to get that first Lunt image with whatever camera I can get it with.

Use your imagination on this white light image. The interesting features mentioned above would be just below the two sunspots at right in this image.

Lunt solar

I disposed of my old Coronado Personal Solar Telescope recently because it had deteriorated (rusted, essentially) over 20 years and was no longer usable. Not that was very usable to begin with. It was nearly impossible to take images through. There are still Coronado PSTs and more advanced solar scopes being sold, but parent company Meade is bankrupt and I don't know how well Coronado products are supported any more.

The most direct alternative to Coronado in the US is a company in Tuscon, Lunt Solar Systems. I decided to replace the PST with a Lunt 50mm Dedicated Hydrogen-Alpha Solar Telescope, one of their lower-end scopes. I think it should be sufficient to get my sun fix, and if not I can always trade up. Delivery was supposed to occur in early December.

However, it showed up Thursday. There was no time to set it up Thursday and Friday was cloudy. The forecast for today wasn't good either, but it cleared enough for a couple of hours to look through it. It doesn't come with an eyepiece, and the only one I had at the recommended starting point of 26mm is a Meade. I set the scope up on my photo tripod, eventually found the sun, and tried to focus. It looked terrible, not even as good as the old PST on its best day 20 years ago. Hmm. I switched to a TeleVue 20mm eyepiece and found the sun again. Wow. I didn't even have to refocus. Note to self: Use your TeleVue eyepieces whenever possible.

At that point I undertook the tuning process, which involves unscrewing and rescrewing a barrel on the side of the scope. This somehow adjusts the pressure in the tube, I guess. Eventually I was able to glean a filament and a prominence. It was time to try photography.

First I tried the Canon M100 on a T-mount. I figured if any of my EOS cameras could come to focus, it would be this one since it is mirrorless and the sensor is not set back very far. Nope, I couldn't focus it. Then I tried my newly-acquired ZWO ASI174MM Monochrome Imaging Camera connected to the even newer ZWO ASIAir Camera Controller, a Raspberry Pi mini-computer packaged in a nice little case. It found the camera, but I could not get a preview image, which I attribute to my own ignorance. I switched over to ZWO software I installed on a spare laptop. It found the camera, but by that time the respite from clouds was over and I gave up for the day. The weather probably won't be great the next few days, but it might clear for a day on Tuesday. I have a few days to research how to get the ASIAir to show me a preview image of the sun.

I know the Lunt works as it gave me some sunspots, a filament and a prominence. Now I just have to get the imaging part to work. I have acquired a lot of telescope equipment in recent months and it is hard to learn it all at once. I acquired a Skywatcher telescope mount a while ago and figuring it out is one of my next big projects. In a perfect world, I mount the Lunt on the Skywatcher and have the ZWO controller driving the mount and taking solar images with the ZWO camera. At night, I swap in my TeleVue 85 telescope and do some deep sky imaging. To do that right, in time I need to add a filter wheel, a guiding scope and an autofocuser, all of which would be controlled by the ASIAir. But I haven't even hooked it to the Skywatcher mount yet, so one step at a time.

My other recent purchase was a ZWO Seestar S50 smart telescope, which is so easy to set up and use that it has done all of my observing in the past three months. But I know the images I can get with a more conventional setup will be better. I spent 25 years resisting going down this astrophotography road, but it appears I have finally started the journey.

New location

Melted Browning #6 is in semi-retirement, but I have some rechargeable batteries that aren't doing anything else and a vacant spot in my back yard. At this point I'm not expecting great images from #6, but it monitors what is going on. This is probably as good as the 7-year-old camera can do, with decent light and not too much distance to the subject. I didn't see the deer in the yard today, but this is only 25 minutes ago as I'm typing this. As I mentioned Nov. 9, the camera was mounted on a metal rod in the middle of the yard pointing northwest.

The newer Browning #11 has been pointing at my shed for a few months, so I decided to swap locations of #6 and #11. Obviously #6 was pointed a bit too high for a deer, so I lowered #11 when I moved it to the post. I'm expecting it will get the critters going through the bottleneck between the fence and the rock garden, and hoping it will take note of any large grazers in the field on the other side of the fence. I saw several deer go through the field the last few days, and there were no triggers by #6. Maybe a moose will be big enough.

Almost

I knew the weather forecast said clouds were going to roll in overnight, but it was so clear just after sunset last night that I decided to make attempt #2 at an Andromeda mosaic with the Seestar 50. I now officially hate the little tripod that came with the scope. I mounted the Seestar on my big tripod and it was incredibly easy to level. I can put the ball head on the little tripod and use it to shoot the birdbath in the spring.

I got going just before 7:00 and accumulated 656 images in just over four hours. Total exposure time was 110 minutes, so even though each image is 10 seconds, it gets fewer than three images per minute rather than the six that you might expect. Unfortunately 110 minutes of exposure was not enough to complete the mosaic before the clouds rolled in. This is how far I got:

Yesterday I was pondering what would happen if I tried to restack the individual images in the Seestar app. Before mosaic was introduced last week, this is what I always did. For whatever reason, I think it gives better results than the stacking that is done during the shoot. I set the app to save all the individual images and did the restack. I was concerned it might take forever, but it wasn't any longer than usual. However, it threw out about a quarter of the 656 images, and the result was far from satisfactory:

Even though stacking the individual images turned out to be pointless, as long as I had them I paged through to see if there way anything to see. There was. I think this is a satellite. An airplane would be a line of red dots from the running lights, and I don't think a meteor would be a solid line. Because of the way the stacking software works, an anomoly like this that only shows up in one frame gets filtered out.

In summary, whenever the clouds clear again, this is what I will try next time I set up the Seestar:

• Use the big tripod.
• Don't rely on the battery, plug it in. The battery is probably good for 5 hours, which is not enough for a mosaic shoot.
• The mosaic image can be set at any angle, so pay attention to composition.
• Don't bother saving the individual images for mosaics.
• Focus before allowing the scope to start taking images.

Cat

After a moose passed behind my east-facing trail cameras a few days ago, I mounted Melted Browning #6 on a metal rod in the middle of the yard pointing northwest. I was concerned it wasn't steady enough and would have a bunch of false triggers from wind movement. No problem. There were only 48 images in the past week, mostly two separate sequences of this cat walking on the fence. This is much better than when the camera was facing east toward the road and I had 5,000 images to go through.

Someone should tell the cat that the birds moved out of the birdhouses months ago. I forgot to set the date on the trail camera so I have erased it from this image, but this one is from about a week ago. There also was one deer, but it was out of focus from being too close. I would leave the camera in this location permanently except I have people who mow the lawn and they probably wouldn't handle it well, so this is just for the winter.

Mosaic

ZWO has released the much-anticipated mosaic capability for the Seestar S50. One of the limitations of the S50 is the limited field of view, which meant it was not possible to get all of the Andromeda Galaxy in one image. I tried out the mosaic last night, the third time I have aimed the Seestar at Andromeda, and got mixed results.

Third attempt at M31, mosaic, last night

When you set up the mosaic, it tells you the target exposure time, which at maximum magnification (for lack of a better word) is 1.9 hours. I set it running but stopped it after 37 minutes of exposure time because I wasn't sure it was in focus. In looking at what was produced, I was correct to stop it. There is one rule I need to follow with the Seestar: On the first target of the night, before letting the Seestar start imaging, always always always refocus. I'm estimating that 37 minutes actually took more than twice that time due to lag between images and dropped frames, so that time was wasted. Then for some reason it told me Andromeda was out of range (which I don't believe was true) and wouldn't let me restart, so I shot the Pelican Nebula, 49 minutes exposure time. I'll replace the murky image I posted back in September with image #4 below. Then it let me restart the Andromeda mosaic at a little bit after 11 pm, once again advising 1.9 hours of exposure.

It ran for almost six hours. I woke up at 4:49 and stopped it, figuring it had plenty. But total exposure time only registered at 107 minutes. The center is reasonably good because lots of images contributed to the middle of the stack, but the edges are noisy because fewer images are stacked. I found out about the mosaic capability from a YouTube video done by Cuiv, The Lazy Geek, a guy with a weird European accent who lives in Tokyo. He said it is not practical to save all of the individual 10-second images and restack them because (unlike "normal" images) the telescope is not centered on the object all of the time. I don't know if he was referring to stacking in the Seestar app or a different program, but I followed his advice and turned off the "Save each frame in enhancing" option. Now I'm wondering if I should have kept it on and tried restacking inside the app, which is what I usually do. Maybe it would take 10 hours to restack, maybe it wouldn't work, I don't know. The only other thing I can think of doing differently with the setup is making sure the scope is level. The little tripod has a bubble level, which is completely covered when the scope is mounted. The tripod is so short that it is difficult to adjust. I might put the scope on my big tripod and see if that is any easier.

I would try again tonight if I could, but the weather forecast doesn't look good for another attempt any time soon. It seems I would need to devote 10 hours to getting 1.9 hours of exposure time to avoid some of the noise. I'm also wondering how often the mosaic capability will be useful. I think every Seestar owner's reaction on hearing the news was, "I'll reshoot Andromeda." Except for Andromeda, I don't know of any galaxies that are too big for the Seestar's field of view. For example, I would like a tighter view of the Whirlpool Galaxy, not a wider one. There are a few nebulae and maybe some star clusters that might benefit from mosaic. I saw Orion shining high last night around midnight, and I might take another crack at the Orion Nebula. I don't believe 2x is necessary, but I would like just a slightly larger field of view.

ZWO just announced a new Seestar, designated the S30, that has two lenses. The main lens is wider than the S50's, and there is a secondary telephoto lens. How that second lens works is a bit murky in what I have read. The only examples they showed were of terrestrial images, and I don't need that capability. The price apparently is $350, $150 cheaper than the S50. I don't think this is a "must-have" replacement or second scope, especially considering I haven't explored the capabilities of the new stuff I've recently acquired for my real telescope. But it's nice to see ZWO is expanding this line.

So, let's compare. Image #1 is last night's attempt, processed from the automatically-produced JPG. I used Siril just to remove the green cast; other than that I used the Photoshop RAW filter. Some of the noisy parts of the image were cropped from the sides and top. I kept the galaxy M110 in the frame at the bottom, and noise is very visible in that part of the image. I tried processing the telescope-standard FIT file in Siril, which produced an image which had a bit more detail but a lot more noise. (BTW, I wish Seestar would save its automatic image as a 16-bit TIF rather than an 8-bit JPG.) Image #2 is my most recent attempt from October 2, which was an improvement over my very first attempt from September 27, image #3. And, as mentioned, #4 is the new version of the Pelican Nebula. I know the three Andromeda images are all different dimensions and are difficult to compare. Primary blame goes to ZWO's bizarre phone-centric decision to shoot everything in portrait mode.

Second attempt at M31, Oct. 2

First attempt at M31, Sept. 27

Pelican Nebula, last night

Orion

One of the problems with the Orion Nebula is it is easiest to see and photograph when the weather is cold. I put out the Seestar last night and my fingers got really cold as I was fiddling with it, the phone app, and the flashlight I was using. The Orion image is a 45-minute stack (270 images), which actually took 101 minutes real time. The discrepancy must be due to a lag time between images and a high proportion of images that the software discards for whatever reason. I took five different stacks between 8 and 45 minutes, and the automatically-produced images all looked comparable except for some rotation. The 45-minute one is the only one I restacked.

Someone posted a Seestar image in our local Facebook group of Orion. That one had low contrast and very little color. I took the restacked JPG and ran it through Photoshop, enhancing color and contrast. The Seestar has its limitations, but taking these few extra steps produces an image that is 100 times better than the automatic image.

While setting up, I noticed that Jupiter was particularly bright, so I aimed the Seestar at it for a few minutes. The bottom image is a stack of only six images, but going for a longer time would not have helped. I think the severe lens flare is from my neighbor's porch lights. The Seestar is not a good planetary scope, so really what I was going for with Jupiter was the Galilean moons. All four are visible, and from left to right are Ganymede, Io, Europa and Callisto.