It seems there's a bit of misinterpretation in my result, in which I showed a snippet of video of the raw frames over 140 minutes at very high speed. The jittering you see in the star field is not field rotation. It is caused by dithering, an advanced technique designed to minimize walking noise caused by sensor imperfections. Field rotation is when you see stars rotate around the center of the frame. Do you see any of that?
Might be nice for you to do a vid on how you do Horizontal Calibration with the EQ wedge already on the scope. Have you done that yet? (the calibration on the wedge) Your other video doesn't use a wedge. Will there be any difference?
To get better raw frames with such short exposures, getting it to align close enough to your pole should be good enough. If you really want to get very good data, you can always do drift alignment where you can do it anyway! Just a little more involved but not too hard to understand.
Kai, what initial direction should the base be pointed to? The scope is a single fork. When you "open arm" it swings upwards. If this is the case, then the scope will point below the "real" horizon. Should this be the direction of the base that is pointed to the NCP? Or, should the base be pointed opposite, so when you open the arm, the scope swings upwards pointing away from the NCP, while its axis is pointed to the NCP? Nobody has explained this.
Hello. Two questions please. Where did you get the 3d print file for the flat adapter for the Celestron finder scope? And what is the USB dongle thing? Does that allow you to wirelessly xfer FIT and JPGs to your phone/computer? Thanks!
I designed a simple 3d adapter for it. The device on the USB is a magnetic power adapter that can snap.off without issues. One can wirelessly xfer files via built-in wifi.
Okay so I aligned the wedge to Polaris, then manually slew to Arcturus, then synced, and then started imaging Arcturus just to test things. It went through the calibration and everything seemed to work well and then it started doing image enhancing. But then I started getting really bad star trails. What am I doing wrong? Thanks!
Have it GoTo another star and verify it is close to target. Try to manually slew and sync to another star in different part of the sky. That would improve the sky model. If all else fails, verify you are close to polar alignment, reboot and retry.
One issue with this EQ set up is the torque placed on the bearing of the Azimuth motor due to the weight of the scope and the tilt. In the AZ set up, the Azimuth motor axis is perpendicular to the ground so there is no torque.
We opened the case and found a sturdy metal bearing supporting the weight and the stress of the tilt. Our residents experts concluded that it was designed well enough to support such operations. ZWO recently also confirmed that it is ok to tilt at that angle. Their main worry now is the tipping of the unit because of the unbalanced weight. You be the judge.
@@kai_seestar Thanks. Tipping over depends upon the center of gravity of the set up. Tripods designed for telescope mount have one leg sticking out on the north direction. If the legs are extended enough the center of gravity of the set up should be well within the footprint of the tripod to not tip over with a minor bump. I guess using regular camera tripods tipping can be a problem if not careful about how the scope is mounted. I just got S50. Will try your method with the EQ mount I have.
Can you explain foil tape on exterior of Seestar? I assume it is thermal related. Also I noticed a USB thumb drive in USB port. Does Seestar support external image storage on usb-c port?
That for heat dissipation during solar imaging. The clue is that the aluminum tape is placed strategically where the sun would shine directly at Seestar during a properly positioned session for sun imaging. The tape may introduce additional dew for night sky imaging, but I use the dew heater setting to compensate.
@ mr.b3054 it's not a memory stick. I added a magnetically connected wire to the external power brick in the same spirit as a MacBook power cord. So if for any reason there's an unexpected pull, my Seestar will be fine. I can link you up with where I got it if you need.
Mine is actually quite light. A simple carbon fiber tripod and a very lightweight wedge. I know others are even 3d printing their own plastic wedge. For these short exposures and small FOV sensor, polar alignment is just done roughly and take me and others less than 1 minute. I agree that if you are ok with the current field rotation and the rejected frames rate, then nothing beats the simplicity of just turning it on. Not everyone needs to convert to EQ.
@@kai_seestar Just saw your earlier response of using the S50 horizontal alignment procedure for EQ mode. I will give it a try. I have a Skywatcher EQ mount that allows the DEC motor be taken off and replaced by a camera mount. If S50 is mounted the AZ motor axis of S50 will align with the RA motor axis of the mount. The mount has a built-in polar scope. I will give it a try. Of course the mount will be unpowered.
I tried. I documented the result in a post in our group. Short answer is no. ZWO intentionally limits the arm going below the horizon, even after I "reset" the level. ZWO just needs to remove that check that the full sky will be available. Over thinking on their part, I believe. We should be able to judge if it's ok to dip below the horizon. No hardware limitation and no harm.
@@danj34y i appreciate you find value in it. I am currently in contact with ZWO, who showed interest in what I did. So hopefully they can update their software to play nice with these experiments. You voice also help to lobby for support.
Easy, when you see the video of your results, the image should not be all over the place if it tracked good@@kai_seestar. The star is all over the place
Ah. That jittering you see is actually dithering. Please look it up for more info. Seestar, and most astrophotography setup, use this randomization of imaging positions to help eliminate walking noise that causes ugly streaks in a fully processed image. This random movement is intentional and very much appreciated. Field rotation would be evident if you actually see rotates around the center. Do you see that. Again, this dithering is an advanced technique and I am doing it a disservice to explain it here.
It seems there's a bit of misinterpretation in my result, in which I showed a snippet of video of the raw frames over 140 minutes at very high speed. The jittering you see in the star field is not field rotation. It is caused by dithering, an advanced technique designed to minimize walking noise caused by sensor imperfections.
Field rotation is when you see stars rotate around the center of the frame. Do you see any of that?
That's a nice way to use S50, hopefully ZWO will incorporate the all sky polar alignment from ASIAIR into the S50 app
Might be nice for you to do a vid on how you do Horizontal Calibration with the EQ wedge already on the scope. Have you done that yet? (the calibration on the wedge) Your other video doesn't use a wedge. Will there be any difference?
Thanks for the video. Sadly I live in the southern hemisphere, where it is very difficult to make a polar aling but I will try.
To get better raw frames with such short exposures, getting it to align close enough to your pole should be good enough. If you really want to get very good data, you can always do drift alignment where you can do it anyway! Just a little more involved but not too hard to understand.
@@kai_seestar hopefully ZWO add an EQ mode to seestar to make it easier
What do we do now that the Sync function is removed from the app?
Kai, what initial direction should the base be pointed to? The scope is a single fork. When you "open arm" it swings upwards. If this is the case, then the scope will point below the "real" horizon. Should this be the direction of the base that is pointed to the NCP? Or, should the base be pointed opposite, so when you open the arm, the scope swings upwards pointing away from the NCP, while its axis is pointed to the NCP? Nobody has explained this.
Does it actually matter in which direction the Seestar is mounted on the wedge?
Hello. Two questions please. Where did you get the 3d print file for the flat adapter for the Celestron finder scope? And what is the USB dongle thing? Does that allow you to wirelessly xfer FIT and JPGs to your phone/computer? Thanks!
I designed a simple 3d adapter for it. The device on the USB is a magnetic power adapter that can snap.off without issues. One can wirelessly xfer files via built-in wifi.
Okay so I aligned the wedge to Polaris, then manually slew to Arcturus, then synced, and then started imaging Arcturus just to test things. It went through the calibration and everything seemed to work well and then it started doing image enhancing. But then I started getting really bad star trails. What am I doing wrong? Thanks!
Have it GoTo another star and verify it is close to target. Try to manually slew and sync to another star in different part of the sky. That would improve the sky model. If all else fails, verify you are close to polar alignment, reboot and retry.
Dont you have concerns regarding the longtime effects of the changed force going on the connector?
@@felixf4613 I have been using this mode since December
@@kai_seestar cool. I really like the S50. But honestly I don't expect such a "sturdiness" of it.
One issue with this EQ set up is the torque placed on the bearing of the Azimuth motor due to the weight of the scope and the tilt. In the AZ set up, the Azimuth motor axis is perpendicular to the ground so there is no torque.
We opened the case and found a sturdy metal bearing supporting the weight and the stress of the tilt. Our residents experts concluded that it was designed well enough to support such operations. ZWO recently also confirmed that it is ok to tilt at that angle. Their main worry now is the tipping of the unit because of the unbalanced weight. You be the judge.
@@kai_seestar Thanks. Tipping over depends upon the center of gravity of the set up. Tripods designed for telescope mount have one leg sticking out on the north direction. If the legs are extended enough the center of gravity of the set up should be well within the footprint of the tripod to not tip over with a minor bump. I guess using regular camera tripods tipping can be a problem if not careful about how the scope is mounted. I just got S50. Will try your method with the EQ mount I have.
@@fmmm1150 yeah. That warning from ZWO is kinda lame. Who would not place the front leg of a tripod to counteract that tilted weight?
Can you explain foil tape on exterior of Seestar? I assume it is thermal related. Also I noticed a USB thumb drive in USB port. Does Seestar support external image storage on usb-c port?
That for heat dissipation during solar imaging. The clue is that the aluminum tape is placed strategically where the sun would shine directly at Seestar during a properly positioned session for sun imaging. The tape may introduce additional dew for night sky imaging, but I use the dew heater setting to compensate.
Thank You! Can you explain the use of the usb memory stick?
@ mr.b3054 it's not a memory stick. I added a magnetically connected wire to the external power brick in the same spirit as a MacBook power cord. So if for any reason there's an unexpected pull, my Seestar will be fine. I can link you up with where I got it if you need.
Thank you again, that is a great idea
Having to carry out a heavy mount and go through the trouble of polar alignment negates the main advantage of S50 which is easy to carry and set up.
Mine is actually quite light. A simple carbon fiber tripod and a very lightweight wedge. I know others are even 3d printing their own plastic wedge. For these short exposures and small FOV sensor, polar alignment is just done roughly and take me and others less than 1 minute.
I agree that if you are ok with the current field rotation and the rejected frames rate, then nothing beats the simplicity of just turning it on. Not everyone needs to convert to EQ.
@@kai_seestar Just saw your earlier response of using the S50 horizontal alignment procedure for EQ mode. I will give it a try. I have a Skywatcher EQ mount that allows the DEC motor be taken off and replaced by a camera mount. If S50 is mounted the AZ motor axis of S50 will align with the RA motor axis of the mount. The mount has a built-in polar scope. I will give it a try. Of course the mount will be unpowered.
I wonder if you could reset the level calibration sensor to fix the false horizon issue... 🤔
I tried. I documented the result in a post in our group. Short answer is no. ZWO intentionally limits the arm going below the horizon, even after I "reset" the level. ZWO just needs to remove that check that the full sky will be available. Over thinking on their part, I believe. We should be able to judge if it's ok to dip below the horizon. No hardware limitation and no harm.
Got it. Thanks for all your testing and sharing!
@@danj34y i appreciate you find value in it. I am currently in contact with ZWO, who showed interest in what I did. So hopefully they can update their software to play nice with these experiments. You voice also help to lobby for support.
The tracking is terrible though, its all over the place
?? Not sure what you mean.
Easy, when you see the video of your results, the image should not be all over the place if it tracked good@@kai_seestar. The star is all over the place
@@kai_seestar I think he's referring to the raw images you show from 9:11 to 9:33 where the stars are shifting from one frame to the next.
Ah. That jittering you see is actually dithering. Please look it up for more info. Seestar, and most astrophotography setup, use this randomization of imaging positions to help eliminate walking noise that causes ugly streaks in a fully processed image. This random movement is intentional and very much appreciated.
Field rotation would be evident if you actually see rotates around the center. Do you see that.
Again, this dithering is an advanced technique and I am doing it a disservice to explain it here.