SeeStar Planet Photography: Expectations vs Reality (And All Your Other Questions Answered)
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Does anyone know why does the S30 also have a Pro version and is it better than the S50 then?
it is not better or worse than the S50, it has different specs. It is better than the S30 though. For the purposes of planetary photography it is still not good
Had to mute it and use closed captions. That voice literally was making my hair stand up on my neck
I hope you're okay
@the_space_koala😂 best possible answer! Btw, I like you voice.
"OK, so we have Saturn in the middle....that is literally a little speck of nothing..." lol....love it. As always, you do excellent reviews. Thank you....
Thank you so much very informative
The s70 should do it. Needs a Barlow.
I'm not sure an S70 is coming... also how would you mount a Barlow lens on an all-closed system? The Odyssey found a good solution for planetary. They have tiny pixels but for everything else they bin 2x2 - however for planetary they unlock 1x1 so you get nice resolution for the planets
@the_space_koala I guess my link got deleted, anyway : googling ZWO Teases Seestar S70 Smart Telescope: What We Know So Far, says it is confirmed. Also, if my smartphone has an optical telephoto mode, why coiuldn't a Seestar?
I saw that video, it's just speculation. ZWO never confirmed a S70 model, just that a larger model may come. The S70 is wishful thinking and confirmation bias (everyone's talking about it). Your smartphone has 2 ways of doing optical zoom: either by using different lenses, or by un-binning otherwise binned images (the iPhone, for example, does both: 5x zoom uses a different lens while the 2x zoom crops and un-bins the 1x lens photo)
@the_space_koala Confirmation bias - just saw a reference to that in "The Idiot Brain". Maybe if everyone expresses an interest, they will build it.
@demej00 I mean we/they successfully bullied them into building EQ mode so maybe :D
for jupiter , you can do an image like it was a celestron nexstar 4SE that taked it . Just go in manual mode ,set exposure to 7,not 1 . After , reduce the gain to 0,do the autofocus and record a 10seconds/10 minutes RAW video . After ,you can play with the luminosity , etc.
I appreciate the settings could be optimized, but you will not get the same resolution with 50mm as you can with 100mm, unless the seeing is actually horrible
🥳🥳
As a planetary imager I take my hat off to you Luca for squeezing everything out of the Seestars regarding the planets. Good advice also.
Thank you for saying that!
I mean close enough haha
Not a chance, they would just be dots the same size as any other star.
they are not stars
I love all the stupid questions people ask because they're too dumb or lazy to research stuff; typical of the 21st century.
Interesting review Thanks for the information
Very nice on planets. I think the S-30 will provide better planetary images than the S-50 because of the nicer bag. Who wants to carry the heavy S-50 to the highest mountain peak.
Another point about the Seestar50 is the view of planets are not so good. Yes, we get a nice view of the Moon, but it is not a planet. The Seestar50 is advertised as a planetary smarttelescope, but it does not provide good views. Yes I can image a galaxy or nebula whivh are outside the range of the solar system, why can't the device give better images of the objects within the system. You are right, it is not ready for publis use as it is now, ZWO needs to add better firmware and features if the are going to continue to sale this 30 or the 50. This is just my opionion.
where is the s50 advertised as a planetary smart telescope? I would be surprised if anyone - apart from some enthusiastic users - said it was good for planets!
Thanks.
Kind advice: you should show your vocal cords to a doctor. Just a kind advice. The video is great.
As a long term amateur astronomer, your video is not surprising since the scope has an extremely small objective. However, I really disagree about the Dobsonian as like the ZWO the image rotation is an issue. My recommendation would be a good brand 6" Refractor with a sturdy autoguide equatorial mount. Reasonable price, great results and a whole lot less hassle to deal with.
I do agree the 6" refractor which a nice mount will be much easier to use. However, it is definitely out of the $500 price range of the Seestar.
@the_space_koala likely, but you should have saved that money. IMHO.
@the_space_koala thought the seestar was over $2000. Did you get a special deal?
no the seestar retails between 500 and 600 dollars! I didn't get a special deal - I had bought the S50 with my own money and received the S30 from ZWO for doing youtube videos.
No one needs a 6 inch telescope to get good images of the planets, a 60mm refractor can show you the Cassini division on Saturn on a good night visually, Saturn's ring can be seen as low as 25mm aperture using an aperture mask on my 80mm apo and detail of Jupiter is easy in a 50mm telescope, i have seen the red spot in one, wasn't the best image but it was there, Venus is awkward but you can see its shape in cheep 10X Binoculars of 30mm aperture. The main thing i got from years of planetary viewing was focal length matters more than aperture (within reason) visual, with a camera you can just record longer as long as you have the focal length or a small censor. Astronomy forums are full of photos people took with 50mm 60mm 70mm telescopes of the planets and the detail is just crazy proving you don't need a large telescope, you just need good seeing and a long focal length. Planets are small, you don't need a large censor, you can just use Region of Interest to boost the frame rate, the IMX585 reaches almost 800fps with a 240p ROI, proven on Cloudy Nights, then after stacking them, place the image on a 4K photo from the same sensor on top of the planet in the photo. While i would never object to someone owning a 6 inch telescope, i own 18 telescopes of all sizes, no one needs one for planets and i have yet to use one that was better than my 80mm apo and some nights, the 80mm out performed the 6 inch Sky-Watcher, i tested a lot during lockdowns. These smart telescopes have capable censors but being fixed focal length severely reduces their capability and i got bored after a month because everything was just too tiny.
We must be frequenting different astronomy forums, as my experience is rather people using preferably the largest aperture telescope they can afford as physics suggest - as long as the seeing allows - you should be able to get better images. It is also true that small refractors are often made with higher precision than the more affordable, mass-produced larger aperture reflectors. Extreme precision in the collimation is needed for hi-res planetary imaging, which is just harder to do than simply placing a perfectly factory-collimated refractor. Also when you mentioned "i have seen the red spot [...] it wasn't the best image but it was there" in the context of a 50mm telescope is mostly in line with my experience shown in this video. The Seestar is ever so slightly undersampled so with smaller pixels you could get slightly better images. This doesn't change the fact that these tiny 50mm and 30mm lenses are just not designed to take nice photos of planets. When I say nice photos I don't just mean being able to tell what planet we're looking at, but seeing and appreciating detail on the surface/atmopshere.
@the_space_koala I didn't say they didn't use or own larger telescopes, i said that the forums are full of photos of smaller telescopes showing amazing images of what they are capable of. Naturally if all things are made equal, it stands to reason you should get a similar outcome but telescopes rarely are. A refractor and Newtonian are not made the same, mirrors don't reflect the same amount of detail as refractors, even long focal length achromats show more detail or equal them. I spent a year comparing a 6 inch Newtonian to a 90mm Celestron Astromaster F11, not once have i seen chromatic aberration in it but the detail on planets shows similar detail to the 6 inch Newt...its not just about apos but long focal length achromats are pretty good and portable until you get above 100mm because they require a much larger mount. That was years ago, my current Sky-Watcher virtuoso 6 inch shows about the same detail as my 80mm apo but my apo sometimes pulls ahead due to the atmosphere, good thing about the Virtuoso is its portable unlike my older 6inch Newtonian which was heavy and clunky. A 76mm Newtionian should pretty much equal a 50mm to 60mm refractor, truth is, its not close, my 60mm shows banding and the red spot on Jupiter much better than the 50mm, my 2 76mm telescopes show zero detail on the planet, one 76mm is f8, it shows everything nice and crisp but no detail, the other is f4, even with a barlow its worse than the f8 which was the point i was trying to get across. If the Seestar had a longer focal length with the same aperture, the planets would be sharper and clearer because that's true magnification, not digital zoom when enlarged, i couldn't see the red spot in your video. Im not proposing people only buy small aperture telescopes but the idea that you need a 6 inch is false when a 80mm apo or a 90mm F11 achromat can equal them, a 70mm refractor with a long focal length shows plenty of detail too, naturally not as much as the 80mm or 90mm but planets themselves are limited. Awhile back this was put to a test by Astrobiscuit compared a 70mm refractor to a 100mm Newtonian, the 70mm refractor beat it with ease. Cloudy Nights is full of examples. My 100mm Zhummell shows about the same detail as my 60mm refractor but on some objects, much less, showing about the same as my 50mm, collimation is not the problem. Collimation is easy on a slow telescope, my 20 years of experience, its only fast sub f4 that's a faff on. True a larger telescope should yield more detail but not all larger telescopes are made the same. Mirrors do not, no matter the lies the Chinese manufactures tells us, show the same amount of detail in equal aperture too glass. This is why i say a a 6 inch Newtonian is not necessary. Personally i wouldn't recommend anything less than a 80mm refractor or 130mm Newtonian in an ideal world but that comes from a person who own 18 telescopes from tiny to big, that's a privilege, the world isn't ideal, people have more important things to use their available funds, this is why cheap f5 70mm telescopes sell in their millions despite the chromatic aberration and other flaws, contrary to astro snobs, they show plenty of the night sky to the average person struggling to get by or with more important things. Then lets not forget people who are disabled, i have helped many settle with an 80mm as a 6 inch Newtonian was far too bulky and awkward to manoeuvre. I really enjoy your videos but i always object to blanket statements as if anything less than that statement isn't good enough when its never as straight forward.
A 71 mm refractor will produce very disappointing planetary images. 30 mm is hopeless.
well that was kind of my conclusion as well! I think it's important to show these examples, though, as people who buy their first telescope will naturally want to see the planets
Imaging objects that are low in the sky forces you to look through more atmosphere. The more atmosphere , the blurrier the image will be. You should wait or pick times when the object is at it's highest point in the night sky for clearest imaging with least atmosphere. Get to higher elevation if you can.
True! Jupiter was almost as transit though