I got a ZWO Seestar S30 for my birthday. I’ve been bringing it when I camp with the kids. It’s been a lot of fun and it’s dead easy. You set it up, point it at the sky, it suggests targets that are likely to be good, tracks them and stacks the images. It’s a remarkable little telescope for how easy it is to use.
Here are some of my favorite shots from recent camping trips.
Empire Ranch
Our first outing with the Seestar was at Empire Ranch, down near the Mexico border. The skies out there are dark and the seeing was excellent.
M42 — The Orion Nebula
The first deep sky object most people point a telescope at, and for good reason. The detail in the nebula’s core and the wisps of gas trailing off are striking even with a relatively short imaging session. I actually left it out for nearly an hour, but the nebula was low in the sky, which throws off the tracking, so it only got a few minutes of usuable images.
M45 — The Pleiades
The Seven Sisters. One of the most recognizable open star clusters in the night sky. You can just make out the faint blue reflection nebulosity around the brightest stars. I really want to do this one again, I think a longer integration time would really bring out the blues.
Joshua Tree
The second trip was out to Joshua Tree. The desert skies are fantastic for this kind of thing, but the desert had a surprise in store for us.
M81 — Bode’s Galaxy
A beautiful spiral galaxy about 12 million light-years away. You can also see its neighbor M82, the Cigar Galaxy, in the same frame.
NGC 2175 — The Monkey Head Nebula
An emission nebula in the constellation Gemini. The reddish hydrogen-alpha glow really comes through.
The Scorpion Incident
We were standing out in the dark fiddling with the telescope when another camper wandered over with a black light. I heard them saying “Oooh, scorpion!”, then “oooh scorpion!” again, and again… and again.
Turns out they fluoresce under ultraviolet light, and the desert was full of them. It’s one of those things you’re kind of glad you didn’t know about five minutes earlier.
After that revelation we decided to let the Seestar do its thing overnight and retreated to the camper. The NGC 2175 shot above was the result of that extended session. Not a bad trade, scorpion awareness for a few extra hours of integration time.