NGC 5033 Waterbug Galaxy
When you first take an astrophoto with Seestar you get terribly excited. You are astonished that you've captured a deep space object perhaps hundreds of millions of light years away with a small inexpensive device about the size (but not the shape) of the Maltese falcon. After a while as your critical eye improves you begin to notice shortcomings. The star colors seem garish, the stars are bloated, poorly defined and they overpower the galaxy or nebula, which is the subject. After some research on YouTube you figure out a way to control that.
For all the wonderful qualities of the Seestar it doesn't track all that well. What that means is that as the camera is exposing the sky the motor moves the camera with the rotation of the Earth. Fine. But I've noticed that the two are perfectly in synch, which leads to stars that are slightly stretched in one direction. While there is a multi-step process to correct that with software the easiest solution is to make each exposure shorter. Even though the Seestar will now do one minute exposures, I have found that 10 second exposures produce the least stretching problems.
The above image used 20 second exposures and I went through the process to make them round once again. I think it was a success, but a lot of work that could have been avoided by using shorter exposures. I think each Seestar is slightly different and I've found that some angles/elevations are more of an issue than others.
NGC 5033 Waterbug Galaxy
When you first take an astrophoto with Seestar you get terribly excited. You are astonished that you've captured a deep space object perhaps hundreds of millions of light years away with a small inexpensive device about the size (but not the shape) of the Maltese falcon. After a while as your critical eye improves you begin to notice shortcomings. The star colors seem garish, the stars are bloated, poorly defined and they overpower the galaxy or nebula, which is the subject. After some research on YouTube you figure out a way to control that.
For all the wonderful qualities of the Seestar it doesn't track all that well. What that means is that as the camera is exposing the sky the motor moves the camera with the rotation of the Earth. Fine. But I've noticed that the two are perfectly in synch, which leads to stars that are slightly stretched in one direction. While there is a multi-step process to correct that with software the easiest solution is to make each exposure shorter. Even though the Seestar will now do one minute exposures, I have found that 10 second exposures produce the least stretching problems.
The above image used 20 second exposures and I went through the process to make them round once again. I think it was a success, but a lot of work that could have been avoided by using shorter exposures. I think each Seestar is slightly different and I've found that some angles/elevations are more of an issue than others.