I have found the SeeStar S50 to be fantastic for variable star photometry and general night sky imaging.
For those of us with less spare time than we’d like, chronic back pain, and a willingness to allow our hobby to evolve (or some subset of these), devices in the category of “smart telescope” like the SeeStar, are something of a revolution.
The S50 field of view (0.73 x 1.29 degrees) is great for many deep sky objects (nebulae, star clusters, galaxies) variable stars, asteroids, some comets, Luna, and the Sun. My current primary use cases are deep sky objects and variable stars.
The fields in which variable stars appear are often themselves quite varied and beautiful and that deserves a separate post.
Below is a small gallery of some deep sky images I’ve taken with the S50 from my back yard over the last year or so, each with a catalog designation, name, constellation (unless obvious from the name) and total exposure time (from multiple 10 second images stacked by the device). Noise reduction has been applied to most via the SeeStar app.
- Horsehead (Barnard 33) and Flame (NGC 2024) nebulae (Orion, 51 mins)
- NGC 2070: Tarantula Nebula (Large Magellanic Cloud, 16 mins)