Saturday morning (10 Aug) as the sun rose over Snowshoe Mountain there was a brief window in time where the the clouds held back enough to provide a clear view to the east. This provided an opportunity to test a brand new astrophotography telescope/camera, the ZWO Seestar S50.
The Seestar is a robotic "smart" telescope (or, single-lens camera) that is controlled via an app on a phone or tablet. You power on the device, connect via the app and use a menu to choose a target. The device uses GPS and an internal compass to figure out where it is and where to point. I was skeptical, but with only a couple button presses it searched for and found the sun and locked on. Impressive.
The Seestar uses a 50-mm diameter f/5 triplet objective. In camera nomenclature this is a 250mm f/5 lens. The imaging sensor is a Sony IMX462, with 2.9 µm pixels and a recording format of 1920 x 1080 pixels (5.57 x 3.13 mm).
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first picture
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2x digital zoom
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Seestar S50 in action with solar filter installed
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For comparison, here is an image taken with a much larger telescope, the Astro-Tech AT102ED f/7 refractor (fl = 714 mm).
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E-M5iii. ISO 200, 1/5000 s, pushed two stops.
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Large sunspot group currently visible.
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AT102ED, after the clouds moved in.
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