I have been dabbling in telescopes for more than 20 years, but I have never taken the financial plunge necessary to get involved in deep sky astrophotography, taking pictures of (for example) other galaxies. I have the telescope, or "Optical Tube Assembly" as they say, a Televue 85. But I don't have the star-tracking mount or other accessories necessary to take proper images of deep sky objects. I've gotten the urge lately to investigate doing this, finally, and I came up with three different tracks with different price points. I know enough about amateur astronomy to know there is always one more gadget to buy, one more upgrade that can be done. But the starting points, from most expensive to least, break down like this:
- $3,000: This includes a cutting-edge harmonic drive equatorial mount, such as the ZWO AM5N, field flattener, and a dedicated astronomical camera. This does not include a new telescope as I would be using the Televue 85, but I would need a mounting rail. These new harmonic mounts are supposedly easier to set up and are lighter than more traditional mounts, such as:
- $2,000: A traditional German Equatorial Mount such as a Celestron Advanced VX, autoguider, field flattener, and a dedicated astronomical camera. Once again, I would be able to use the Televue 85 but would need a mounting rail. This equipment requires careful polar alignment every time it is set up and there is a learning curve.
- $500: A smart telescope, either a ZWO Seestar 50 or a DwarfLabs Dwarf 3. These scopes don't even have eyepieces, so are considered astrographs. They can be set up in a matter of minutes and don't require a bunch of other accessories. The downside is the image quality can't measure up to the other two equipment bundles. There are more expensive smart telescopes with better image quality, but I thought I would try the cheap ones first. I ordered the Seestar because it was in stock. The Dwarf 3 is a new model and has not arrived in the US yet. I did contemplate pre-ordering the Dwarf 3 but decided to wait until after it is available and some people form opinions on it. I envision selling off these starter scopes as more advanced scopes become available. But if I lose interest, the investment is not that great.
So I received the Seestar today. Because the sun was poking through the clouds and it does not look promising for getting a galaxy tonight, I got a few snapshots of the sun with the included solar filter. The weather looks good Tuesday-Friday of next week for a real shakedown cruise. One thing I don't like already is the Seestar's 1920x1080 vertical orientation, which I squared off here to 1080x1080. (The Dwarf 3 has a lot more pixels, 3840x2160.) I guess since you control the scope with your phone, ZWO wanted the images to fit comfortably on a phone screen in the usual orientation. Another immediate dislike was the user manual, which helps you get set up but doesn't tell you the best way to take and process images. It's like the first half of a user manual.
Since purusing a manual to figure out how to do things is not an option, I'll have to spend a few days looking at YouTube videos. But it took no time at all to figure out how to take this snapshot. When told to look for the sun, the scope found it within a minute. My guess is the built-in GPS tells it how high the sun should be in the sky at that moment, and it spins around until it finds it. This image is not as good as ones I've taken with a DSLR or mirrorless (included below), but I didn't get the SeeStar to take pictures of the sun.
My attitude has been that I can theoretically take a wildlife photo as good as one taken by a famous pro because we have the same equipment. But for astronomy images, an amateur can't compete with the big scopes that cost billions of dollars to build and (sometimes) shoot into space. I've finally decided that I'm not competing with Webb and the Hubble, but I would like to take a few deep sky images that I can call my own.
Attempt #2: On the 21st, I took some videos of the Sun and attempted to process them through ASIVideoStack, a free program from ZWO. I don't know what I am doing wrong. There is a processed image here, but there is a severe grid pattern that is is obvious depending on the magnification. I also tried various other programs and finally was able to get a very soft-looking result in AutoStakkert. Anyway, here is the ZWO product, followed by a single snapshot processed with Photoshop. The quality is about the same as yesterday, but the spots are different and there is no wispy cloud passing by. It appears Seestar processes deep sky images differently than solar system objects. If deep sky works, I don't care if the solar images suck, although I would like to get some comets. If I need an image of the Sun, I will use one of my Canon cameras.
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