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Did Seastar Just Got An Upgrade?

ZWO Seestar S50 Equatorial Mount
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Szijártó Áron avatar
Szijártó Áron avatar
Oh my gosh, you guys, I can't believe it! The moment we've all been waiting for is finally here! Seastar officially has a mount mode! 🎉 This is something I think we all felt was overdue, and now it’s a reality! With this new equatorial operation, we can say goodbye to field rotation and those pesky 10-second exposure times!  I mean, this is such exciting news for all of us! The Seastar is finally getting the love it deserves! But here’s the thing—I’m a bit curious. Since it’s a smart telescope, will it automatically switch whatever it’s placed on, or do we still need to get an equatorial mount or wedge separately? The preview video didn’t really clarify this. What do you all think? I'm just so thrilled!
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Tom Kennedy avatar
Tom Kennedy avatar
This update came out a few weeks ago and was highly anticipated.  It works well for me.  You will need a wedge of some sort and either a larger tripod or some way to offset the weight of the EQ mounted SeeStar so it does not tip over.   You do need to tell it which mode to use.
Szijártó Áron avatar
Szijártó Áron avatar
Tom Kennedy:
This update came out a few weeks ago and was highly anticipated.  It works well for me.  You will need a wedge of some sort, and either a larger tripod or some way to offset the weight of the EQ-mounted SeeStar so it does not tip over.   You do need to tell it which mode to use.

So, wait, if it's in EQ mode, do you still need aswell the leveler too, or the EQ mode is will fix the seastar without leveling it?   Cause if so, then I need to force this off from the Seastars tripod cause it's stuck.
Tom Kennedy avatar
Tom Kennedy avatar
You don't "need" the leveler, which I assume in this case to be an aftermarket leveler, as your objective is to align the polar axis of the scope with the celestial pole.  I don't see an issue with it staying on there.  You will need some way to get the scope aligned.  Some use a pan/tilt camera tripod and others, like me, use a SkyWatcher wedge.  I must emphasize again that balance on the SeeStar's small tripod will be an issue unless you offset the center of gravity in some manner  - or use a tripod with a wider base.  There are numerous posts about this on the Cloudy Nights forums.
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Philip Duggan avatar
Philip Duggan avatar
There is a very "easy" how to video on the Seestar site /YouTube ... just follow the instructions and away you go 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYZKh6DGlOk
Skye Suwashiro avatar
Skye Suwashiro avatar
While optional, I utilized a leveler due to my pavement being mostly uneven. Current EQ mode setups I’ve seen being used include an external wedge (with ZWO coming out with their own wedge at some point). We’ve also gotten news about the exposure times options getting an update (60s exposures). While it is doable on the included tripod, I heavily recommend a tripod of your own.
Jeff Parke avatar
Jeff Parke avatar
I use EQ mode very successfully at 36 degrees S with the skywatcher wedge on the original SeeStar tripod.  Just need to be meticulous about the wedge leaning out exactly over one leg, and that leg needs to be facing south (would be north in N hemisphere).  I suspect at latitudes closer to the equator this arrangement would get dicier.
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Tom Kennedy avatar
Tom Kennedy avatar
I am at 33 degrees north and it was too dicey for my taste, so I printed one of these and it works great.  https://www.printables.com/model/1180078-zwo-seestar-s30-s50-equatorial-eq-wedge-adapter-ad/files
Matthew Peters avatar
Matthew Peters avatar
Down here in Florida at 29° my S50 works like a champ on my Sky-Watcher wedge. Definitely need to be centered over a leg but it works great.   The S30 feels made for this, it's great as well.
David Burrell avatar
David Burrell avatar
I purchased the Omegon Polar Wedge and upgraded to the Apertura Carbon Fiber Tripod. I also hang an additional 10-pound counterbalance weight beneath the tripod. Here in South Texas, I’m pushing the wedge to its limit, but the Seestar S50 works just fine. It’s only dropping about 10% of the subs on calm nights. This is a game changer for sure.
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Charles Barker avatar
Charles Barker avatar
It is a bit of an overkill but I’m using mine on a celestron nextstar tripod and wedge. I figure if it is setting there not doing anything (I use my OTA on a strain wave mount) then why not.

I’ve seen some using the original tripod with bag filled with weights and others with elaborate 3d printed apparatus fitting the SeeStar top. Point being that in most cases SeeStar tripod with a wedge comes with risk unless you augment some how.
msmythers avatar
msmythers avatar
Talk about over kill but what do you do when you have a pier for your old large telescopes that you can't use anymore. I'm in Florida at 28°.

Sascha avatar
Sascha avatar
Putting my S50 onto the wedge was not an issue, but the automatic polar alignment was.

The seestar points its camera upwards and performs a plate solve to correct for misalignment. By the looks of it, this camera alignment is dynamic to always points upwards no matter where it is on earth. There's no option to change this angle manually. Since I've got another balcony above mine, this doesn't work for me as of now. So, before you spend money on a wedge, make sure you have an undistracted view right above you.

I've seen posts of others mentioning that this is a known limitation and ZWO is looking into it. Haven't looked for an official source though.
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Andrej Flis avatar
Andrej Flis avatar
Most of my images are taken in the alt-az mode, and I only use 20/30s exposures towards the north without needing EQ mode. I actually don't have any image in my profile that is pure EQ mode captured. I did beta test the EQ mode, as I am part of the beta test program, and I did add some EQ data to my existing projects, but I never felt I was limited by alt-az in any way, especially in the final quality of the image.

In fact, I found that using EQ mode has somewhat reduced my overall quality. The sensor of the S50/S30 is not cooled. And it only takes dark frames at the start of the session. The Seestar also doesn't take any bias frames for read noise calibration. So in EQ, there are a ton of users now (me included in B3/4), that have rainbow/color patches appearing in the image or streaks/bands of light vertically across the image. These are sensor artifacts, be it thermal or read noise, while the banding is perhaps something else entirely. With no field rotation to smooth there artifacts out, they now get statically imprinted into the data/image, as the framing is fixed.

I have also just recently reverted back to alt-az as I am imaging some southern targets, and I can't polar align from my southern balcony. I have suggested this in the beta testing group, along with some other suggestions to help minimize the sensor issues, and I guess something is being worked on, but nobody aside from ZWO really has any information. 

The bottom line, EQ does work well, it allows you longer exposures across a larger part of the sky and you have no field rotation. But I wouldn't say it has by itself really make a noticeable improvement in the final image quality. It does help to have a much better efficiency and gather more data in the same time, so that is probably the biggest upgrade overall. But it does take good polar alignment to have good efficiency, especially with longer exposures. 

Luckily, the app is really good in terms of polar alignment, so it will guide you to proper polar alignment quite easily. And as mentioned, you do not need to level the tripod and everything, but the main point is to have a stable setup, to prevent tipover. I would also not suggest using that tri-wheel leveler, as that has some wobble in it by design and is known to cause instability and dropped frames, as it is not designed to have an angle force applied to it, like a Seestar under an angle.

Good luck!
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Monty Chandler avatar
Monty Chandler avatar
So easy, a caveman can do it.
msmythers avatar
msmythers avatar
Andrej Flis:
Most of my images are taken in the alt-az mode, and I only use 20/30s exposures towards the north without needing EQ mode. I actually don't have any image in my profile that is pure EQ mode captured. I did beta test the EQ mode, as I am part of the beta test program, and I did add some EQ data to my existing projects, but I never felt I was limited by alt-az in any way, especially in the final quality of the image.

In fact, I found that using EQ mode has somewhat reduced my overall quality. The sensor of the S50/S30 is not cooled. And it only takes dark frames at the start of the session. The Seestar also doesn't take any bias frames for read noise calibration. So in EQ, there are a ton of users now (me included in B3/4), that have rainbow/color patches appearing in the image or streaks/bands of light vertically across the image. These are sensor artifacts, be it thermal or read noise, while the banding is perhaps something else entirely. With no field rotation to smooth there artifacts out, they now get statically imprinted into the data/image, as the framing is fixed.

I have also just recently reverted back to alt-az as I am imaging some southern targets, and I can't polar align from my southern balcony. I have suggested this in the beta testing group, along with some other suggestions to help minimize the sensor issues, and I guess something is being worked on, but nobody aside from ZWO really has any information. 

The bottom line, EQ does work well, it allows you longer exposures across a larger part of the sky and you have no field rotation. But I wouldn't say it has by itself really make a noticeable improvement in the final image quality. It does help to have a much better efficiency and gather more data in the same time, so that is probably the biggest upgrade overall. But it does take good polar alignment to have good efficiency, especially with longer exposures. 

Luckily, the app is really good in terms of polar alignment, so it will guide you to proper polar alignment quite easily. And as mentioned, you do not need to level the tripod and everything, but the main point is to have a stable setup, to prevent tipover. I would also not suggest using that tri-wheel leveler, as that has some wobble in it by design and is known to cause instability and dropped frames, as it is not designed to have an angle force applied to it, like a Seestar under an angle.

Good luck!

Andrej

What I see as the big plus for EQ mode is multinight acquisitions. Say you do 40 minutes or so one night  and you can do that over many nights spaning for months or even years if we have the S50 that long. You get the great benifit of the images always being in roughly the same camera orintation which is a problem for Alt/Az mode. Then you can combine multinights but with less artifacts maybe. That's how I used my old scopes where I combined data over many years even. That's what I hoping to do with the S50 and Dwarf3.
Andrej Flis avatar
Andrej Flis avatar
Andrej Flis:
Most of my images are taken in the alt-az mode, and I only use 20/30s exposures towards the north without needing EQ mode. I actually don't have any image in my profile that is pure EQ mode captured. I did beta test the EQ mode, as I am part of the beta test program, and I did add some EQ data to my existing projects, but I never felt I was limited by alt-az in any way, especially in the final quality of the image.

In fact, I found that using EQ mode has somewhat reduced my overall quality. The sensor of the S50/S30 is not cooled. And it only takes dark frames at the start of the session. The Seestar also doesn't take any bias frames for read noise calibration. So in EQ, there are a ton of users now (me included in B3/4), that have rainbow/color patches appearing in the image or streaks/bands of light vertically across the image. These are sensor artifacts, be it thermal or read noise, while the banding is perhaps something else entirely. With no field rotation to smooth there artifacts out, they now get statically imprinted into the data/image, as the framing is fixed.

I have also just recently reverted back to alt-az as I am imaging some southern targets, and I can't polar align from my southern balcony. I have suggested this in the beta testing group, along with some other suggestions to help minimize the sensor issues, and I guess something is being worked on, but nobody aside from ZWO really has any information. 

The bottom line, EQ does work well, it allows you longer exposures across a larger part of the sky and you have no field rotation. But I wouldn't say it has by itself really make a noticeable improvement in the final image quality. It does help to have a much better efficiency and gather more data in the same time, so that is probably the biggest upgrade overall. But it does take good polar alignment to have good efficiency, especially with longer exposures. 

Luckily, the app is really good in terms of polar alignment, so it will guide you to proper polar alignment quite easily. And as mentioned, you do not need to level the tripod and everything, but the main point is to have a stable setup, to prevent tipover. I would also not suggest using that tri-wheel leveler, as that has some wobble in it by design and is known to cause instability and dropped frames, as it is not designed to have an angle force applied to it, like a Seestar under an angle.

Good luck!

Andrej

What I see as the big plus for EQ mode is multinight acquisitions. Say you do 40 minutes or so one night  and you can do that over many nights spaning for months or even years if we have the S50 that long. You get the great benifit of the images always being in roughly the same camera orintation which is a problem for Alt/Az mode. Then you can combine multinights but with less artifacts maybe. That's how I used my old scopes where I combined data over many years even. That's what I hoping to do with the S50 and Dwarf3.

Multinight can be done with alt-az aswell. I have done projects with 30-50h+ all in alt az, gathering data over the whole year with varied rotations. In some cases like with the horsehead nebula or the Iris nebula, I even took field rotation to my advantage to increase the data area coverage, without using the mosaic mode. So from practice I can tell you that multi night projects have no limit in alt az. As always, its just knowing how to use it to its max potential.

As said, all the projects/images in my astrobin profile are taken in alt-az. I just added some EQ data on top of some in the past month when I was beta testing the EQ mode. But all my work is alt-az bases since February 2024 when I got my Seestar..
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Vineet Panwalkar avatar
Vineet Panwalkar avatar
Hi Andrej,

@Andrej Flis i have to say that your images are an absolute benchmark for Seestar users like me. I saw on a lot of YouTube videos ever since the EQ mode was officially released that the rejection rate decreases drastically in the EQ mode when compared to alt/azi mode. On a level of 0.3 0.4, I get on an average 50-70 % usable frames (non mosaic). What’s your experience here with EQ v alt/azm?. I will receive my wedge soon and will try the EQ over Easter, weather permitting.

Regards,
Vineet
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msmythers avatar
msmythers avatar
Finally able to try the EQ Mode. A nice balmy 78F outside. Since I use my pier and the Skywatcher was being use with my Dwarf 3 I thought I'd see how close the alignment was to begin with. .2 and .7 right off the bat. The disturbing thing for me was the whining noise while it moved into EQ mode. I'm at 28 degrees so the scope is much more horizontal then vertical. I'm also carring a 7oz. battery bank. It wasn't loud but it did not seem happy. It worked first time. And then I sent it to Orion without issue or noise. No problem finding and starting the image. Since I did not try to improve the polar alignment 30 second exposures were maybe a 30 percent miss. I switched to 20 seconds and no problem, no skipped subs. We shall see how this goes. Next time out I'll tweak the polar alignment. I'm just glad I can drop this straight on the pier and shoot.

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kurt ragsdale avatar
kurt ragsdale avatar
I sold mine yesterday.
Wanni avatar
Wanni avatar
Look at my setup and explanations here :https://www.astrobin.com/o21nef/D/?nc=collection&nce=182
kuechlew avatar
kuechlew avatar
Vineet Panwalkar:
Hi Andrej,

@Andrej Flis i have to say that your images are an absolute benchmark for Seestar users like me. I saw on a lot of YouTube videos ever since the EQ mode was officially released that the rejection rate decreases drastically in the EQ mode when compared to alt/azi mode. On a level of 0.3 0.4, I get on an average 50-70 % usable frames (non mosaic). What’s your experience here with EQ v alt/azm?. I will receive my wedge soon and will try the EQ over Easter, weather permitting.

Regards,
Vineet

Indeed very impressive work by Andrej! It shows the payoffs when you put in the hours. A good bortle zone and great image processing capabilities certainly help a lot too. 

I never had issues so far in alt-az mode and usually experience only very few rejections. In general I end up with about 80% integration time compared to the total time passed.  Make sure you level your SeeStar well, don't image too close to the zenith and protect the SeeStar against wind gusts. I recently started to image in eq mode and indeed so far I had no rejections at all when using 10 second exposures and again I was in about an 80% range of integration time. I used eq mode because the object I chose - the Leo Triplett - fits nicely into the view of the SeeStar when using eq mode. Eq mode did not work well for me with 20 second exposures. I ended up with easter egg stars - quite appropriate for the current season but not what I hoped for. I found the polar alignment somewhat puzzling. Strangely enough when I repeated polar alignment multiple times I could not achieve convergence. Every time I restarted polar alignment I was off by one or more degrees. I then corrected my setup until the SeeStar claimed my polar alignment is fine. But when I repeated it, it was off again. In the end I just restarted my SeeStar, did one polar alignment and started imaging. Everything went well from this point on with 10s exposures. 

Not sure if I will continue using the eq mode much, since you need a more bulky tripod and a wedge for it which I have to carry into the field. Still, I appreciate that ZWO continues expanding the capabilities of the SeeStar and as pointed out it may be helpful for the purpose of image composition or when imaging close to the zenith.

Clear Skies
Wolfgang
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