May 14th 2050 GMT Venus and Jupiter
Venus and Jupiter were getting closer in the sky. I snapped them together with my phone camera.
May 14th 1100 GMT Sun
The Seestar S50 failed to find the sun, despite recalibration of the compass. I did a binocular scan instead and saw the two close sunspots I had seen before.
May 12th 2145 GMT Galaxy M90
I photographed the galaxy M90 with the Seestar S50. I processed a single integration run of 62 minutes before cloud covered the sky. I felt it needed a much longer integration time but would need to wait until next year for longer periods of darkness.
May 14th 2050 GMT Venus and Jupiter
Venus and Jupiter were getting closer in the sky. I snapped them together with my phone camera.
May 12th 1100 GMT Sun
Despite the clouds, I managed to take full disc and closeup videos of the sun for stacking.
May 12th 2315 GMT M99
I tried to photograph the galaxy M99 with the Seestar S50 but the image was very faint. Even stacking in Sequator only produced a faint smudge.
May 11th 0440 GMT Moon
I photographed the moon with the Seestar S50 by taking a video for later stacking.
May 10th 2045 GMT Venus and Jupiter
I photographed Venus and Jupiter with my phone camera.
May 9th 2235 GMT Globular Cluster M5
The afternoon and evening had been rather hazy. As this continued into darkness, I decided to attempt to photograph a bright deep sky object with the Seestar S50. I chose the globular star cluster M5. I managed only 15 minutes integration before cloud moved in again.
May 9th 1135 GMT Sun
The weather stayed clear later than expected. I took full disc and closeup videos of the sun with the Seestar S50 for later stacking. I was having problems with Newton's Rings, so did not get the contrast I hoped for.
May 8th 2230 GMT Star Cluster Melotte 111
This session was in parallel with my session on the globular star cluster NGC6229. As Melotte 111 is a particularly large object, it is impossible to fit in the field of view of the Seestar S50, Instead, I used the DSLR camera at 70mm focal length, ISO6400 and 6 seconds exposure. I took multiple images, with the intention of stacking. I stacked 69 images in two stages.
May 8th 2130 GMT Globular Cluster NGC6229
I had a go at photographing the globular cluster NGC6229 in Hercules with the Seestar S50. I processed a single integration of 150 minutes in GraXpert and GIMP. The long integration and process showed a dense core but many outer stars.
May 6th 2150 GMT Galaxy NGC2903
Despite the moving cloud, I had another go at the galaxy NGC2903, in Leo, with the Seestar S50. I had 36 minutes of integration time before being completely clouded out.
May 6th Jupiter and Venus
I took some videos of Venus and Jupiter with the Seestar S50 for later stacking but was not convinced that I had captured the phase of Venus.
I also caught Venus and Jupiter with my phone camera.
May 6th 1305 GMT Sun
Against the weather forecast, the sun was out from behind the clouds. I took full disc and closeup shots of the sun with the Seestar S50.
May 5th 1120 GMT Sun
I set up the Seestar S50 to photograph the sun. I saw two large sunspots but cloud rolled in before i could get any image.
I tried to stack the FITS files for M56 but the result was very faint.
May 4th Reprocessing Images
I tried stacking the FITS files on the Seestar S50 for the galaxy M100 using Deep Sky Stacker. It complained that multiple FITS files were incompatible, so I stacked one. I processed it in GraXpert and GIMP and the result was a bit better than processing the file store on the mobile app. There is also a small galaxy to the bottom right, which I have been unable to identify.
I stacked a FITS file of M31 in Framing mode with the Seestar S50. GraXpert did not work, so I just processed the stacked file in GIMP. By showing the outer arms, I overexposed the nucleus.
May 3rd 1120 GMT Sun
I took full disc and closeup videos of the sun with the Seestar S50 for stacking to produce still images.
May 1st 2150 GMT Moon
There was a lot of haze around and even Vega and Arcturus looked faint. I had to boost the exposure to capture a video of the moon with the Seestar S50. Nothing else was worth photographing.
