A week of Seestar

After a week of imaging with the ZWO Seestar S50 (now designated as camera #20 on my remote trigger list), I have come to a few conclusions. First, it is a low-resolution deep sky camera for a limited number of objects. That's not a criticism, just a realistic assessment. Second, although the device is very easy to use, the key to producing good images comes afterward in the processing. The ease of use of the equipment can be overwhelmed by the difficulty of processing.

In that week, I have produced acceptable images of M31 Andromeda Galaxy, M33 Triangulum Galaxy, M101 Pinwheel Galaxy, NGC 281 Pacman Nebula, NGC6992 Eastern Veil Nebula, M27 Dumbbell Nebula, and M16 Eagle Nebula. I have attempted to process these images with varying degrees of success in the stacking and processing program Siril. But I have decided the best stacking program for me at this time is the one built into the Seestar app. Not the real-time stacker that runs during imaging, but the Deep Sky Stack that is an option on the main screen. The only thing I'm using Siril for is to remove the green cast that many of the images display. All of the other processing -- noise reduction, levels, color saturation, contrast and sharpening -- is done in Photoshop. Maybe a skilled Siril or DeepSkyStacker or Registax user can make something far better than the automation within Seestar, but I'm not sure it is worth learning how to do it given the low-resolution nature of the source material.

The Seestar is a fun device. At a reasonable price of $499, it has given me a capability I never had before, to image deep sky objects. As mentioned in the previous post, it also can shoot the Sun, Moon and planets, but not well. Some may find the lack of an eyepiece to be objectionable, but whenever I looked through it I never saw much anyway. (Especially since I was getting progressively blind until I had cataract surgery in October 2018.) Even if you have good eyesight, you will not see the blazing color of these objects through the eyepiece. Colorful photographs are formed from minutes or hours of exposure time, and that is what Seestar attempts to do.

The Seestar is a flawed instrument...but ALL cameras, telescopes and optical devices are flawed in some way. It is fun to use and I can't wait for the seasons to progress and the Orion Nebula to come into view. But I do want to list my pet peeves:

• The image is 1,920 pixels high by 1,080 pixels wide. That's the shape of a phone screen held in portrait mode. Not everyone wants to do all of their image processing in a stupid phone app.
• Also, 1,920 x 1,080 isn't a lot of pixels, and the field of view is very narrow. Andromeda does not entirely fit. That's one reason I might be interested in the Dwarflabs Dwarf 3, a similarly-priced device with four times the resolution and a wider field of view. (And not portrait.) But it is a new model and as of today is still listed as 'preorder' on B&H.
• There is no way to schedule a shoot. You have to be there to push the button at the beginning and at the end. If there's something I want to shoot from 3:00 to 4:00 AM, I don't want to have to be there.

There was a vague announcement from ZWO Wednesday of a new Seestar. Since I only got this Seestar S50 a week ago, I feel sudden obsolescence, but on the other hand I think it will be at three months before there is product being shipped from China, and maybe a few months after that before most people can actually get one. That's time for me to figure out what I'm doing with the current device, and more importantly, with the processing software. I was thinking back to the early days of the DSLR. I jumped in with the Canon 1D in August of 2002. Two years later I upgraded to the 1D Mark II, which had a larger sensor and better noise control. Eight years after that, I got the 5D Mark III, which I believe still compares favorably to new models in terms of image quality under most circumstances. So in my experience with the DSLR, it took 10 years for it to evolve into a modern device. There were DSLRs before I got my first one, so maybe it was really 15 years. And regarding the processing software, that also has evolved dramatically since 2002, and some of my old 1D images benefit from a new Photoshop session 22 years later. I'm not getting any younger, so I'm not waiting around for the next model to come out. When the time comes, I get a new one and the old one goes on eBay; until then I try to get proficient.

Here are the images so far, some with additional comments.

M31 Andromeda Galaxy: The Seestar's field of view is too narrow to fit the entire galaxy.

M33 Triangulum Galaxy

M101 Pinwheel Galaxy

NGC 281 Pacman Nebula: Color in astronomy images is subjective, but this is a bit dim.

NGC6992 Eastern Veil Nebula: Deep Sky Stack turned this image sideways, so this is from the real-time stacked image that Seestar saves automatically as it is shooting. It is a bit dimmer than I would like, so I might try the processing again, using fewer of the 253 images.

M27 Dumbbell Nebula

M16 Eagle Nebula: In the middle of the nebula are the famous Pillars of Creation. They are small and fuzzy, but if you zoom in, they are visible. Hubble gathered thousands of times more photons to make its iconic image.