Re: ZWO Seestar 50
The mailing list has managed to completely mangle my comments into the parts of Trevor's post that I was quoting :(
Hopefully this makes it clearer!
Trevor:
So if you wish to take an image of M42, the Veil Nebula, the Rosette...... then this is a great start compared to going for say, an equatorial mount and a Redcat set up. The small mount will cost about the same and the scope is £750 despite it being about the same size and you still have to get the camera and tech to drive it and do a lot of learning. me:
I have a 250mm Newtonian in a dedicated observatory. It doesn't get used because it's just too damned complicated and I've never been happy with the results I could get with it.
My Vespera gets used whenever it's clear. I managed several hours observing with it last night, despite the high cloud.
Trevor:
The problem will then be - what is next? They are just too small an aperture for dimmer objects, i.e. most of them. they are limited to an exposure of a maximum of 10 seconds because they are an Alt Az mount hence only good for brighter objects, especially in our skies. me:
IMHO, the real problem is not dimmer objects but smaller objects and lack of focal length. The Seestar is 250mm f/5 and the Vespera is 200mm f/4 so they're reasonably fast. I've captured small galaxies down to mag. 17 with my Vespera, but they were /tiny/. The spatial resolution is quite poor at 3 arcsec/pixel. M95, for example, spans about 60 pixels.
Trevor:
They are not as good as the Vaonis Vespera scopes, but they are 3x the price. me:
The original Vespera is available at £1299 vs £539 for the Seestar, so 2.4x would be more accurate. It is far superior, though, especially when using the scope's internal "CovalENS" mosaic stacking mode.
I have one that's surplus because I've bought a later model Vespera. I haven't decided whether to part with it yet, though...
Trevor:
Overall, a good start for a beginner into astrophotography.
me:
I personally think this class of scope has a place for much more experienced astrophotographers that want something that's portable, fast and simple to set up.
I'm taking my newer Vespera to Australia in March. It fits easily in my cabin baggage and I know I can produce results with it that far surpass anything I could do with a portable star tracker.
The other thing that's great is that because they're a common platform (instead of a Heath Robinson assembly of scope, camera, drive, etc where the end result is a unique combination) there's a cooperative community built around them. I've been collaborating with another Vespera owner in Frome to make quite large super-mosaics that would be much harder if we had different imaging rigs.
Ray
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