@@oq17 Thank you. I haven’t yet done a video on interpretation of the logs and graphs, but there is plenty of material out there on this. It’s a quite complicated topic, especially as it’s not always easy to diagnose what is wrong from the plots when your guiding isn’t good. Experience/practise are probably the best thing to build up, along with some web browsing to try to find plots that look like yours with the cause explained.

@@garybond161 Thank you Gary. Yes! There is a Dwarf 3 on the way to me as I write this!!

@martinsastrophotography excellent I'll wait for your review before I choose one then thank you 😊

It can be charged from 5V 2A or 12V 2A. However I found that it still discharged if connected to a 5A charger while operating (with dew heater on) so I recommend a 12 supply that can deliver at least 2 amps. As for power bank capacity, I recommend at least 12000mAh (=12Ah) at 12Volts. Remember that you need a USB type C output cable from your power bank, so make sure you identify a way to do that.

@@martinsastrophotographyThank you Martin

@melmarrison8769 Thank you! If portability is a factor in your decision the S30 is much less cumbersome. The S50 has a larger aperture but a narrower field of view. However with the new mosaicking capability larger targets can still be imaged. If I was a beginner I would go for the S30 as it’s more portable, a lower price, and gives you almost the exact same experience. Either way, if you decide to purchase one please use the affiliate link in the description. It won’t cost any extra and it will help me make more videos like this. Thank you.

@@piskeylowe Thank you so much for your kind words. Much appreciated!

Thank you!!

Thank you! I feel for you, and hopefully it won’t be too long before you receive what you have ordered. In case it helps….you can just have fun with the kit when it arrives, rather than having to film everything you do, then edit all the video, then upload it, write the description, edit the subtitles, etc… leaving loved ones on their own for hours night after night while you toil to create a video you are not sure how many people will even watch, all while also holding down a full-time job. (P.S. I’m not complaining …I choose to do this! I must be nuts!)

@@Paulie1978100 Thanks. I live under Bortle 5 skies. Thanks so much for subscribing! Clear skies to you too.

@@martinsastrophotography Thanks Martin, did the images come in that quick on your S50? I'm leaning towards a Dwarf 3 over the S30 simply because it has a slightly better sensor and mainly EQ mode. Any thoughts?

@Paulie1978100 Yes, just the same on the S50. I am hoping to try out a Dwarf 3 quite soon. Until then I will hold judgement on which is better. However ZWO are usually pretty responsive to good ideas and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they added an EQ mode in a future firmware upgrade. Price and size are a key a discriminator of course.

@@martinsastrophotography Great stuff!, thanks Martin, clear skies

Thank you Chris!

@@martinsastrophotographyit was nice hearing your voice again. It’s only been about 35 years!

@mihalis68 I didn’t twig it was you Chris!!! I can still remember your voice pretty well after all that time. Hope life is treating you well mate.

@@SonnyPruitt-q1s Thank you!

@@FPVsimon Thanks. Yeah it’s for folks with no ap experience for sure.

@@barrybrown5755 Thank you Barry!

Thank you Stew. I will try to answer your questions: 1. It depends what you mean by resolution. The S50 has a longer focal length (250mm) and wider aperture (50mm) than the S30 (focal length 150mm, aperture 30mm), giving it better angular resolution but less field of view. The sensors in the two telescopes are very similar, both being 2MP (1920x1080 pixels) with 2.9ųm pixels, but the one in the S30 is better as it has greater well depth and no amp glow. 2. I have shown finished images at the end of the video, but the noise gets less and less visible the longer you image. My images were just 20-60 minutes. If you image for 6 hours it will look much better. I can’t tell you if they would print acceptably on A3 because it depends on how long you image for and what you consider acceptable. :-) 3. No, I did nothing to the images. I wanted to show what came out of the unit. There is a lot that can be done to further improve these images in post processing, especially regarding sharpening and noise reduction. 4. That depends on how long an object stays visible from your location, which you can determine from the plots in the app or using something like Stellarium. An object close to Zenith at midnight might be able to be imaged for 5-6 hours. I hope this helps.

@martinsastrophotography Perfect. I appreciate your help

@@happyfeet5338 Thank you. The Milky Way spans the entire sky, and includes hundreds of nebulae. For this reason none of the smart telescopes are suitable for photographing the whole Milky Way in a single photograph as they have far too narrow a field of view (which makes them great for individual targets!). A DSLR with a wide angle lens is better suited to photographing the Milky Way. If you are still going to buy a SeeStar S30, please use the affiliate link in the description. Thank you and clear skies!

​@martinsastrophotography thank you for your reply. But I can still use the mosaic mode to take pictures of the milky way I.e take several Pictures and stitch them together to get full milky way.

@ I understand what you’re saying but you need to understand that the full Milky Way would require many hundreds of images stitched together! The Seestar’s Mosaic mode only allows up to 2x zoom-out so you would still need to mosaic a very large number of these using suitable software. As I said, if you want to image the Milky Way you really need a wide angle lens, with something like 15mm focal length. A DSLR on a tripod is a better bet for this than a smart telescope. I’m not saying it’s impossible with a smart telescope, but it’s a mammoth project for sure. Take a look at my Milky Way photo on Instagram taken using a Canon R5 with a 14mm lens. This is barely half of the entire Milky Way. Here’s the link: instagram.com/p/DCw545ksjk9/?igsh=MXVvc2NndXNhYW9sMg==

@@martinsastrophotographythanks very clear so even with the wide lens of the D3 I shall not be able to take a full picture of the Milky Way.

@ It depends whether the Dwarf 3 allows you to stack long exposures with the wide angle lens. This was not possible on the Dwarf 2 and is not possible on the SeeStar S50 or S30 either.

Enjoy it! Please use the affiliate link in the description. Thank you.

@@christhomson866 Hi Chris. A number of things can help. 1) use a really sturdy tripod 2) Set up on solid ground, like a patio or driveway. 3) Ensure all the locking screws for azimuth and elevation are tightened after polar alignment 4) Ensure clutch ring is properly tightened. After a couple of years I bought the replacement wedge (base) for mine from William optics. It’s not cheap at £239 but it is MUCH better than the one that comes with the Skyguider pro. I’m glad I bought it but iOptron really should supply something like that with the original unit.

@martinsastrophotography Thanks for your reply, I'll give those things a try and see how I get on. I've read lots of reviews about changing the base for WO instead but it is pricey like you said.

@@christhomson866 It is very pricey. But it is also beautifully engineered! The iOptron one is really poor by comparison.

@@robjones337 Thanks Rob. No, it’s not important. Getting the backfocus right is only important to get as flat a focal plane as possible when you are doing wide field Astrophotography. A planet occupies a tiny area in the centre of the field, so if this small area is in focus that is good enough. Collimation is very important for planetary though!

@@oq17 Thank you! You need the light coming from the primary mirror to be reflected into the focus tube. The bit in the description that you mention is simply saying that you need to make sure the orientation of the secondary mirror is achieving this or the fine tuning steps in the video won’t be possible to perform. Clearly to divert light from the primary mirror towards the focus tube requires the plane of the secondary mirror itself to be at 45 degrees to the longitudinal axis of both the telescope and the focus tube. To achieve this, I suggest looking down the focus tube and turning the secondary mirror on its mounting stalk until it appears circular (it’s actually elliptical but will appear circular when orientated correctly). You should also check that it appears to be concentric with the focus tube itself. I hope this helps. Let me know if you need any further clarification.

@@janeclark1881 A good question. The vast majority of the focus adjustment is done by positioning the focus knob (and hence primary mirror) correctly so that you are close to good focus. The EdgeHD design is such that the required backfocus is fixed irrespective of focus knob/primary mirror position. The microfocuser makes only very small changes to fine tune the focus, so should not affect field flatness significantly. In my experience this works very well.

@@martinsastrophotography That's really interesting. One of my big bugbears is that it seems to be really difficult to focus planets well with my 11" Edge HD.

I was imaging Jupiter with the EdgeHD11 two nights ago. I used the microfocuser after getting close to focus with the focus knob and then locking the primary mirror in place. Focusing was not a problem, but getting Jupiter on my sensor was a bit of a battle, even with my Telrad and flip mirror arrangement because my EQ8-R has backlash in RA which, until it is all taken up, means the tracking temporarily fails to happen. This is enough to make the planet drift off the sensor. The backlash in my mount can be tuned out, but if I do that it binds in cold weather! I should have saved up and bought a better quality mount!!

@@janeclark1881 Thank you Jane! I really appreciate you taking the time to send me this comment.

@@shubinternet Thank you for your comment. I’m glad you enjoyed the video. I hope you are able to get an EdgeHD before too long…it’s such a versatile telescope! Clear skies.

@@PeterRowe-k1o Thank you Peter!! I’m so pleased that it was useful for you.

@@DR-fy7qy Thank you! I only have the standard Stellarium on my iPhone but I can still help you. You need to turn on the RA/Dec grid. It’s a blue grid with concentric circles. At the centre of them is the celestial pole, very near Polaris. To make the sky rotate, just touch the time at bottom right then use the arrows to make time move forward or backwards and the sky will rotate accordingly. I hope this helps.

​@@martinsastrophotography It works! However, it seems the current version does not have the option to turn on the Celestial Poles. Thanks for your response.

Thank you. I don’t use SGP any more. It was too restricting. I now use NINA and I am very happy with it.

Thank you!

@@tariqalkindi8045 Thank you. An aircraft will fly across the moon very quickly, but if you take the shot at just the right moment you can get a good shot of it.

@@martinsastrophotography Thanks so much for the response

Thanks Brian. I’m glad it was helpful for you. I had to study a few videos on GHS to understand how to use it correctly. It’s not simple but it is very powerful!

@@mikekingswood Thank you!!

@@MrGp3po I get asked this a lot…it’s a very good question. No, it is not critical. This is because you can simply unlock the RA clutch and rotate the mount in RA until 12 is “at the top”. There is a clever approach you can do to make sure it actually is “at the top”. I explain this in my polar alignment tutorial. I hope this helps.

@@mupangamwanakatwe1300 Thank you. Yes, there wasn’t an obvious gradient to remove, so I didn’t use DBE.

@@freddyacosta2358 Thanks Freddy! Glad it helped you and I really appreciate you taking the time to comment.

@@davidcarr4984 Not really sure!!! It’s just the next video…. I have lots of other data but I’m not sure whether to just show the rest of the images or do a processing video on each one…what do you think?

@@martinsastrophotography Well, when I think about your (ambitious) imaging plan, there are a lot of images and I guess the processing of the nebulae would be pretty similar. The ‘cloud’ images may need some different techniques and could require a 2nd processing video. My first thought is that the ‘last’ video in the series would be a summary of all the processed images - everything you captured during the week - I look forward to that one! But between now and then, I for one would love to see what (if anything) you would have done differently - more targets/less or different. If you could go back for an extra night now, what would you capture? What would you have taken with you that you didn’t, or visa-versa. You mentioned there wasn’t that much to do during the day, a little more about that and the others that were there at the same time would also be interesting. Thanks again for the videos, they have been really interesting.

@@davidcarr4984 Thanks for those thoughts David. I will try not to disappoint!

@@joarmape6471 Thank you so much for subscribing and for your positive comments!

@@marlapinaire944 Thank you….I wish they would!!!!

@@FPVsimon Great! You’ll have the best time!!

@@keithnisbet Thank you. I’m glad it was helpful to you!

@@peter-zk9cc You are correct. You need to polar align, then set the home position and then switch on the mount. Then perform a star alignment (1-star or 2-star should be enough). Then you should be able to slew accurately to targets. Thanks for your comment.

@@bordersphotography-astroco2825 Thank you!!

@@grahamroberts1116 Thanks Graham! Really appreciate your kind words.