M31 with the Seestar S50

[Andy Elliott]

The Andromeda Galaxy
I usually image our amazing galactic neighbour at this time of the year. This time I used my little smart scope (you can carry it around under one arm!). Its such a great little scope to use, hardly any setting up needed, you just tell it what you want to look at and it just does it's thing.

Taken over 5 consecutive nights in September, and shot using EQ Mode and Mosaic Mode, this little scope continues to impress.

Total light frames = 2400
Exposure time 10s
Stacked in Pixinsight
Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop

 

[JimFox]

Hey Andy, I am not sure how I missed this. I am traveling, but still try to keep up.

This is super cool! That's some really great work with M31. I would say it turned out really nice.

5 consecutive nights is really awesome!

Any reason why you are using 10 sec subs with EQ mode? I run mine now at 30 secs. I guess with Mosaic Mode 10 sec subs would let it finish it's first pass faster. I know at 30 secs it took over 3 hours just to finish the first pass. It had me thinking that maybe I should go with shorter subs to get that first pass done. I know when it was approaching 3 hours I was hoping it would finish before it go too close to the horizon. With 10 sec subs it would take maybe an hour for that first pass?

I am not sure if I answered my own question? Or maybe you just like 10 min subs?

 

[Andy Elliott]

Hey Andy, I am not sure how I missed this. I am traveling, but still try to keep up.

This is super cool! That's some really great work with M31. I would say it turned out really nice.

5 consecutive nights is really awesome!

Any reason why you are using 10 sec subs with EQ mode? I run mine now at 30 secs. I guess with Mosaic Mode 10 sec subs would let it finish it's first pass faster. I know at 30 secs it took over 3 hours just to finish the first pass. It had me thinking that maybe I should go with shorter subs to get that first pass done. I know when it was approaching 3 hours I was hoping it would finish before it go too close to the horizon. With 10 sec subs it would take maybe an hour for that first pass?

I am not sure if I answered my own question? Or maybe you just like 10 min subs?

Hi Jim, tbh I have not really looked into the differences with longer exposures, although I would say that with the few I have done at 20 or 30s, the stars tend to look a bit elongated, even though I'm in EQ mode. Also as you say, with 10s on a mosaic you get more or all of the mosaic frame covered in each session. I guess if I was using 30s over several nights then there might be some areas of the mosaic frame where the number of frames would be fewer; not sure if this would impact ion the final stacked image. I guess I'm a bit of a creature of habit. A bit like with my main imaging rig, where I tend to image at 150s (I know some use 300 or even 600s), but for me I think 150s is the sweet spot, and there is less chance of losing many frames due to clouds etc.