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Can Seastar S50 capture all Of the Solar System Objects Besides The Moon And The Sun?

ZWO Seestar S50 Equipment Beginner
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Szijártó Áron avatar
Szijártó Áron avatar
Hello and welcome.
I'd like to ask everyone that is anyone out there who is using this amazing smart telescope the Seastar s50. While I was looking for binoculars and cameras this telescope caught my eye.
And I got so curious about it cause I saw images about it, that it can capture all those objects that are so far from us that cannot be seen like the Galaxies, nebulaes and star clusters.  So this question came into my mind, can it capture all of the planets of the solar system? Like Mercury, Venus, and the rest of the planets.
Noah Tingey avatar
Noah Tingey avatar
Definitely nothing beyond a small dot. Planets are so, so much smaller in the sky than the galaxies/nebulae/star clusters you're seeing images of. The galaxies/nebulae/star clusters that you're seeing images of are typically bigger in the sky than the Moon is.

For reference: from our point of view, Jupiter is the biggest planet in the sky. Yet at its closest approach to Earth, it's only ~1/72nd of a degree wide. Whereas the FOV of the Seestar is like 1.3 degrees. So Jupiter would fill about 1% of the horizontal FOV of the image. It would be about 20 pixels across.
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Matthew McPherson avatar
Matthew McPherson avatar
To answer your question, yes it can, but like Noah mentioned above, you're going to pick up very little detail and the photos won't really be Astrobinable 😂

I treat the planets more like visual targets than photographic ones; just because they don't yield fantastic images doesn't mean they aren't worth pointing at! I've been able to pick up Mercury, Jupiter (with moons) Saturn (with moons), Uranus (with moons), and Neptune, along with Ceres, Pallas, and Juno. I plan to get the rest when they're more conveniently located. I'll plop a few examples below, but a couple fun projects in the Seestar are: 
  • Take a 5 minute avi of Jupiter/Saturn in planetary mode (4x zoom), as well as shots in stargazing mode to detect the moons. Process each separately and combine in an editing program for a family composite (see below)
  • Track main belt asteroids over the course of two to three hours in a single night. Selectively process 5-minute chunks to create animations of their movement. They move much faster than we realize! (see below)
  • Take little tiny pixel photos of each, just for the fun of it! (example below... lol)




Jupiter with Galilean moons (composite)


Saturn with Titan (left), Dione, and Iapetus (composite)


Pallas animation: https://astrob.in/cecpux/0/



Uranus with a zoomed in view of Oberon and Miranda.

And yes, even Pluto can be captured with sufficient conditions and time.

🍻
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Szijártó Áron avatar
Szijártó Áron avatar


Ah okay, I started to watch videos about it and someone said that it is not really good for planetary photography. So I got confused cause this is the most budget friendly telescope that can exist.