My History with Astronomy

I have been interested in astronomy since I was in the 3rd grade. I made my first telescope from parts of binoculors one of my friends didn't need and some cardboard tubing. I saw the craters on the Moon with it. Since then I have constructed my own 6" reflector telescope, and have purchased several other telescopes. A few years ago I ended up with several refractor telescopes with motorized tracking mounts and iPhone apps to control them. Setting up and using them got to be more than I could handle, so the telescopes just sat in the garage. Using them to take pictures is very complex, and then there was processing the results in arcane apps! Eventually I donated the telescopes to a local astronomy club.

Seestar S50 Smart Telescope

In late 2024 I read about a new generation of "smart" telescopes that had hit the market. The one I ended up buying was the Seestar S50, manufactered by a chinese company called ZWO. It combines in one small package these features:

• A refractor telescope with a 50mm objective lenses.
• A tripod and motorized tracking mount.
• A computer running Linux with a USB C rechargeable battery and storage to hold images. The computer handles finding the object, taking multiple 10 second images of it, and then merging them all together as a single image.
• The computer provides a wifi link that talks to an iPhone app.
• The iPhone app controls which objects to photograph and the settings for taking the images. Once the image is created, it can easily be downloaded as a jpg file.

To take a picture, I only have to set the Seestar up with a view of the right part of the sky, select the object, and set the start and end time. All by itself, the telescope finds the object (using something called "plate solving"), and tracks it. The final merged image is then downloaded to my iPhone.

I use Photoshop Elements to edit the images: for cropping and adjusting lightness and contrast. I don't spend a lot of time on this.

AI Assistants I have been using