Can You Really Got Bored Of The Seastar?

Tony Gondola:
I don't own one but I think this goes two ways. Some people just get bored with it and it ends up in the closet. For some people, it ignites a real passion, and they eventually move on to a more capable setup. I can't see this being the system of choice long term, but if it gets people into the hobby, then great!

And so wait, what if someone doesn't have much money to get a better setup than the Seastar, and they couldn't afford to get a better one? Then what? Usually, nowadays, all electronic telescopes are kind of expensive, and their value moves around from 100 to even 1000. Which sucks if we want a better setup but can't afford that.

While I don't always agree with some assertions by @Sascha Wyss , I think that in this video he makes a compelling case that if you want to be "more open" to future changes in your passion/interest and/or in your gear, you can achieve that by investing a similar initial amount of money as you would with Seestar, but still keeping things quite simple - while also getting exposed to more "advanced" concepts/components.

Sascha Wyss:
So you will also disagree with me here, because no, this is not at all what I'm saying in this video. ;-)

You are absolutely right, I crossed smart scopes in my mind - mixing together different level smart scopes in the same bucket.
Still, I do believe that if you want to future proof your choices better, going down the path you describe in the video makes perfect sense.

Michael Fleenor:
I've been doing AP on and off for close to 30 years.. began digital imaging with a selfbuilt CCD ( cookbook camera) and a few other DIY designs. Got "serious" with SBIG cams ( ST10, STL-11k) and decided late last year to try out a Seestar to see if it might be useful...for the money there is not a better bargain in astro imaging gear than the S50 IMO.

 I might have got bored if not for the Seestar_Alp application developed by  the smart telescope underworld. This enable S50 owners to enjoy full sky EQ mode and fully automated scripting. I ended up building a small array with mulitple S50's and am now working on a small prototype observatory to house my Seestars.

I really find it useful for AP as well as light curves of variable stars and bright asteroids.  With a little thought you can easily come up with enough projects that will keep you entertained.


While the Seestar is not going to replace high end imaging gear- you may not need or want to spend the money on high end gear, the S50 quite capable and may be all you need.

Ah, okay, that's good to know.
I planned before to get a better telescope cause I wanted to see the surrounding objects before the seastar. I got myself a standard telescope rig, the Celestron Powerseeker 60az. But only to just get a closer glimpse of the viewable solar system objects outside of the sun. Seastar was one of the reasons why I wanted to get that. It's not because of the deep sky objects. It was because to get a chance to see the sun if it is active,  cause if so, then we can expect soon an aurora borealis event.

"GAS" I like it, don't think I've ever heard it phrased that way before. 

Focal length and Aperture are the 2 of the most common things to desire in AstroPhotography.

50mm aperture and 250mm Focal length is slightly better than a stock DSLR but not by much.
scopes with these specs are limited to Wide field and more suited to beginners.

personally I would get bored at that focal length pretty quick.
I am not saying everyone feels like this,  and this is just my personal opinion.

My first semi serious imaging system was a Stellarvue SV80A and an EQ5 type mount. I took some lovely images with that system. No regrets.

This is a hard question to comment on. I would not say I am bored with my Seestar, but I do get disappointed and frustrated. The updates that seem to break things, bother me a lot, and I am not super excited with the low res images it takes.

I do however love that I can drop it in the backyard and mess around with very little effort. I think my seestar gets the most use of all my gear, but that doesnt mean I love it the most. 

I dont believe in the "hack it to run in EQ mode", if I wanted EQ mode and the hassle of doing a polar alignment I would bring out another rig. 

Pros
Easy (when its not messed up by firmware)
Light (I can throw it in my truck and drop it at the park randomly)
New AI model makes on-device / in app image editing kind of interesting

Cons
Short exposures  (10-20 seconds)
Seems to take a very long time to create images that I am happy with, in comparison to an EQ mount Astro Camera, Refractor rig
I feel like it drops a lot more frames than I lose when I use other rigs, and mosaic mode makes things even worse. 

I called my Seestar a toy on FB and the whole channel erupted, so I wont use that term. But my expectations for it align with "toy" so it limits my expectations. I dont get bored when I want to mess around, I do get frustrated when I want to dig in an create the best image I can.  I see a some really nice Seestar images that include 30 hrs of data that took 5 days to create. If I was that serious about the image I am creating, the effort to setup and use my more expensive and capable rig would absolutely worth it. 

I dont see me getting rid of my Seestar, but I am not particularly loyal and a giant fanboy either.

I got bored with it rather quickly, probably in under 50 hours of acquisition time. It is not a bad product, in fact, I think it is the best value you can find.  But, 2mp at 1080…… When rumors of a new Seestar started to pop up I got excited and was ready to buy a more advanced and capable tool. The announcement of the smaller S30 with similar abilities was really a disappointment. I joined Cloudynights, expressly, to learn and begin to build my own rig. With my current DSLRs ranging from 16mp to 36mp I'm on the hunt for a proper mount. The S50 got me back in to astronomy after many years away and dollar to dollar it can't be beat but, at the end of the day there's no software upgrade that is going to change it's hardware specifications and hard limitations. Regardless, I enthusiastically recommend the S50 to anyone who's interested in getting into the hobby. My opinion? Yes, you really can get bored of the S50.

New here because of the Seestar. Got mine in July. Used it once or twice then put it away. Pulled out again in October and have been hooked, using it almost every clear night I can. Now working on building my first refractor rig, learning to edit astro images (familiar with "normal" photo editing, but astrophotography is a different process for sure), and signing up for AstroBin, lol. Planing on using both my Seestar and my refractor – Seestar for quick spur of the moment imaging nights, and refractor for more planned out nights.

Ken Mascola:

Szijártó Áron:

Andrew:
I got bored with it rather quickly, probably in under 50 hours of acquisition time. It is not a bad product, in fact, I think it is the best value you can find.  But, 2mp at 1080...... When rumors of a new Seestar started to pop up I got excited and was ready to buy a more advanced and capable tool. The announcement of the smaller S30 with similar abilities was really a disappointment. I joined Cloudynights, expressly, to learn and begin to build my own rig. With my current DSLRs ranging from 16mp to 36mp I'm on the hunt for a proper mount. The S50 got me back in to astronomy after many years away and dollar to dollar it can't be beat but, at the end of the day there's no software upgrade that is going to change it's hardware specifications and hard limitations. Regardless, I enthusiastically recommend the S50 to anyone who's interested in getting into the hobby. My opinion? Yes, you really can get bored of the S50.

Yeah i also was exptected something more from s30  but when i take a look on deep space astros review of it. It’s basically the same setup it has as the s50 has. Only its field of wiew or scope is basically bigger and the others are the same thing. What i could have imagined atleast for it is that if we could have seen anew feature in the settings that can be turned on and off is to create calibration frames folder mostly darks. I bet everyone is agrees with me in that.

ZWO FW/SW already creates darks and calibrates each sub with their median   As well you can use seestsr_alp to create darks if you really feel they are needed.  Again this device was primarily created for first time astronomy hobbiest but it’s funny how there are so many experienced users using it regularly

And how does that helps like how can u get the calibration frames from seastar?
I mean, as i see its a software how can u make calibration frames with it?