I've been slowly (slowly....) working on an open source version of what the Seestar provides - a 3D printable shell, easily sourced mechanics and optics, open source electronics (3D printer controller boards are fabulous here). I love the idea of smart telescopes, but I also hope and believe that someday we'll have an open source equivalent to the easy entrypoint of, say, the S30.
Maybe I'm being too much of a purist because late model smart telescopes now allow you to grab the raw FITS files so the relative value of a fully open ecosystem is lower, but I'm trying to build towards the motivated teenager segment: someone who maybe has a Seestar or has seen one, and wants to have that experience, but wants to own it themselves and actually understand what's happening. I have the mechanics mostly working in Alt-Az mode, EQ mode is currently accomplished using a hinged plywood board fashioned into the world's shittiest polar alignment wedge, and now I'm working on figuring out how/where to source good enough optics. I have already learned a whack-ton designing the thing, and I hope that in the future the build will be interesting and informative enough for others to get a bunch of experience in Astrophotography for very little money.
You can buy the sensors used in a lot of these telescopes for <50USD on Aliexpress, the drive mechanics and electronics are ~80, and then all you should need (hopefully) is a cheapo Raspberry Pi 3 or equivalent, putting the total BOM at under 200 bucks. I'm hoping that by early next year I'll have something presentable and we can start building an open source ecosystem to compete with these very impressive but very heavily integrated instruments.
If I understand correctly, this is only used for astrophotography? You can't actually view through it with your bare eyes? That, to me, was the main reason to buy a reflector/refractor telescope; to receive the actual light of a planet (okay actually the suns light bouncing off the planet) bouncing through a bunch of mirrors, lenses and eyepieces back into your own eyes. The first time finding and seeing Saturn and Jupiter with my own eyes was amazing.
I have a high-end rig and this one. I use this one way more frequently due to the simplicity of the setup. You are capturing light in no time and it does not weight a ton. As long as you are conscious about its limitations, it’s a fun gizmo if you like astronomy or enjoy astrophotography.
> The telescope works out where it is, finds the target, tracks it and starts collecting images. A few minutes later, something appears on the screen that clearly is the nebula, galaxy or star cluster you selected. And importantly: it is your image.
Idk, to me this feels like I'd be so removed from the entire process that it doesn't feel like it is my image anymore.
Somewhat poor analogy, but these smart telescopes feel similar to bringing in CNC center for someone enjoying woodworking. Sure, it might be very efficient in manufacturing the end result and it is kinda neat that there are cheap options from china available. But it also removes the whole enjoyment of the craft, working with hand tools and what not.
There tend to be two kinds of people, those who value the journey and those who value the product. This telescope is aimed more at those who value the product, and hand tool woodworking is probably more for those who value the journey. You would want a telescope that lets you value the journey
That's weird, I'm following only 4 or 5 amateur astronomy youtube channels but they all published at least one video of the exact telescope over the last days
How weird. It's almost as if 90% of amateur anything Youtube channels are actually advertisement businesses pushing the sponsored product of the day on their audiences. So weird.
There is something fundamentally different about actually looking at Jupiter... The image might be faint, imperfect ... But it is live.
The astrophotography/live viewing split in astronomy is interesting. For me, the whole reason I do backyard astronomy is to find the objects myself and observe directly, to the point where even using an app like Stellarium feels a bit like cheating.
I have a Dwarflab DWARF 3 (also mentioned in the post) that I highly recommend. It’s one of those gadgets that ended up using more than expected when I bought it. I toss it in my luggage and I got to capture really nice sky pictures with little effort (Marfa TX, Patagonia, latest total solar eclipse in Spain)
I'm interested in your eclipse experience. I tried capturing totality with a seestar S50 back in the 2024 eclipse. What I found is that at the very moment of totality, I had not removed the solar filter fast enough, and the bloody thing lost lock on tracking the Sun. Rather than fiddling with the equipment, I immediately started to ignore the 'scope and just experienced the eclipse.
That was the right thing to do!
But removing the solar filter right at the moment of totality is such an edge case (both for the software and my wetware which was kind of overwhelmed) that I wonder how others dealt with it?
I was capturing video and removed the magnetic solar filter as quick and carefully as I could. It worked but didn’t love the results. Hard to not move the telescope a bit that causes realignment and then obviously it has to readjust exposure that takes a moment. Same when putting it back after totality. I’m also looking for advice. We have another chance next year in Spain!
Yes indeed! Spain, next year! (And Australia, the year after that! ;-) )
I'm also wondering about the feasibility of taking these gizmos on airplanes, what with the Lithium battery packs, etc.
What we really need (for some definition of need) is a robot-filter-remover, timed to deal with the two critical times (first and last instant of totality; 2nd and 3rd contacts from memory). Anybody out there interested in building something like that? It would be purely a passion project, because it could only be used a few times a decade...
I’ve flown with it a handful of times without issue. Both in cabin luggage and checked in but I guess I’m risking it in the latter.
Not sure how a robot filter remover would work on the DWARF 3 that is reliable and works around loss of alignment and the exposure adjustment. I would love to find a solution for next year. Also wonder how can one test it out beforehand. I don’t want to burn the sensor ha ha
So like others in this thread, I bought a used telescope, a 8" Dobsonian in my case, and it's absolutely massive, like 5 feet tall. Totally different than this SeeStar. And I don't see things like the photos in this article through my telescope. Those nebulas? No way.
So I have to ask - am I getting a more "genuine" viewing experiencing? Are stacking and perhaps AI enhancements reflecting the real night sky? Or is SeeStar/iPhone/Pixel output drifting more towards generative art?
Looking directly through? Or taking photos through?
With photos you can have a longer exposure and see things too faint for the naked eye, not just too small. I'd guess that's what's happening here. You could very probably blow this smart cam out of the water with pictures taken through your telescope. Especially if you can have it track whatever you're shooting to allow very long exposures
The main problem here is - purely visual, you will have a very hard time seeing galaxies and pretty much no chance of seeing nebulae, specially in color. The objects are pretty faint and at best, you will see a milky smush. Those nebulae I capture send out light in wavelengths not visible to the human eye, so you'll have no chance of seeing them live.
There are some night-vision eyepieces which boost contrast and lightness - really cool but also pretty expansive.
> am I getting a more "genuine" viewing experiencing?
That's a nearly philosophical question and the answer is yes and no. You will be able to see object you normally would not and the image you get is correct in the way that colors for example represent certain gases, so they are not fake, but also not realistic in the way of how you would see it with your naked eye.
I already knew what telescope this was before I clicked the link. I've had one for a few years now. It's an awesome tool that has improved over time. You can leave it out all night now if you want and program a schedule.
It’s not bad, but does start sounding like AI if you’re familiar with their writing style:
> Gradient correction. Noise reduction. Separating stars and nebula. Stretching the faint structures carefully. Working on contrast and colour. Putting everything back together.
A small piece of feedback: it is a really interesting article, but also quite grating to read. I'm guessing you used AI to review/edit, and it seems to have added a lot of filler and coated the piece with its own writing style.
I've never done this, but I suspect it will be like pretty much every other DIY project. It looks like it could be cheaper at first, but in the end turns out to be more expensive than projected for any of the reasons DIY projects end up like that.
Absolutely, and I highly recommend starting that way. The comparison was meant against building up a photography rig with similar capabilities. Even with used components, it's gonna be hard to get into this price range.
If you are buying think through whether you want a wider field of view (S30 series) or more details (S50 series). S30 might be a better bet for amateur viewing.
When I bought my telescope, there was a dedicated physical brick&mortar store with knowledgeable people on staff. I had done a little browsing online to get an idea, but it was the staff that really sold me. The very first question I was asked on what I primarily wanted to view with the telescope: solar system bodies or deep sky objects. I chose wide field for DSOs. Sadly, that store closed about a year after my purchase.
Saying all that to expand on how the wide field or not is an important decision. If you primarily think of a telescope giving detailed magnified views of the moon or similar, then you will not be happy with a wide field regardless of how powerful of an eyepiece you use.
Yup, exactly what I noticed. And I do think the content is really cool but the writing, the section titles, the entire site design, it all reminds me of ai :(
Not to say anything negative about the author though, im sure this took a long time to put together whether it was written with ai or not. But I definitely noticed those ai-isms
Maybe I’m a Luddite but I find AI prose completely tiresome to read, and its presence in an article forces me to be skeptical about whatever the author wrote. The latter was obviously a problem pre-AI but these tools simply make it much easier to tell stories, narratives, etc. that aren’t yours.
Yeah, and there is no pleasure reading this. It's way too long and verbose for what it's trying to say. I'd much rather read the prompt, in bullet points or whatever format they were provided before inflating a few example pictures and notes into a short novel
How is this criticism not just ad hominem slop? You could have said "It's way too long and verbose for what it's trying to say". The writer is orthogonal.
I've been slowly (slowly....) working on an open source version of what the Seestar provides - a 3D printable shell, easily sourced mechanics and optics, open source electronics (3D printer controller boards are fabulous here). I love the idea of smart telescopes, but I also hope and believe that someday we'll have an open source equivalent to the easy entrypoint of, say, the S30.
Maybe I'm being too much of a purist because late model smart telescopes now allow you to grab the raw FITS files so the relative value of a fully open ecosystem is lower, but I'm trying to build towards the motivated teenager segment: someone who maybe has a Seestar or has seen one, and wants to have that experience, but wants to own it themselves and actually understand what's happening. I have the mechanics mostly working in Alt-Az mode, EQ mode is currently accomplished using a hinged plywood board fashioned into the world's shittiest polar alignment wedge, and now I'm working on figuring out how/where to source good enough optics. I have already learned a whack-ton designing the thing, and I hope that in the future the build will be interesting and informative enough for others to get a bunch of experience in Astrophotography for very little money.
You can buy the sensors used in a lot of these telescopes for <50USD on Aliexpress, the drive mechanics and electronics are ~80, and then all you should need (hopefully) is a cheapo Raspberry Pi 3 or equivalent, putting the total BOM at under 200 bucks. I'm hoping that by early next year I'll have something presentable and we can start building an open source ecosystem to compete with these very impressive but very heavily integrated instruments.
Do you have a repo for this project? I would encourage you to work in the open, if you're not already.
Even a BOM would be helpful. Also understanding the post-processing/cleanup step would be interesting.
If I understand correctly, this is only used for astrophotography? You can't actually view through it with your bare eyes? That, to me, was the main reason to buy a reflector/refractor telescope; to receive the actual light of a planet (okay actually the suns light bouncing off the planet) bouncing through a bunch of mirrors, lenses and eyepieces back into your own eyes. The first time finding and seeing Saturn and Jupiter with my own eyes was amazing.
I have a high-end rig and this one. I use this one way more frequently due to the simplicity of the setup. You are capturing light in no time and it does not weight a ton. As long as you are conscious about its limitations, it’s a fun gizmo if you like astronomy or enjoy astrophotography.
> The telescope works out where it is, finds the target, tracks it and starts collecting images. A few minutes later, something appears on the screen that clearly is the nebula, galaxy or star cluster you selected. And importantly: it is your image.
Idk, to me this feels like I'd be so removed from the entire process that it doesn't feel like it is my image anymore.
Somewhat poor analogy, but these smart telescopes feel similar to bringing in CNC center for someone enjoying woodworking. Sure, it might be very efficient in manufacturing the end result and it is kinda neat that there are cheap options from china available. But it also removes the whole enjoyment of the craft, working with hand tools and what not.
There tend to be two kinds of people, those who value the journey and those who value the product. This telescope is aimed more at those who value the product, and hand tool woodworking is probably more for those who value the journey. You would want a telescope that lets you value the journey
I'm glad to hear Claude enjoyed it.
Ed Ting recently had a good video "Let's Overreact!! Smart Scopes Take Over? Chinese Products are the Best? Astronomy is Dead!?":
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYJwgEwxG-U
If you want to get into astronomy, he has a few good beginner advice videos:
* 101 books/binoculars/telescopes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IlmekWsEAQ
* some more books: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhbAEx2le7o
That's weird, I'm following only 4 or 5 amateur astronomy youtube channels but they all published at least one video of the exact telescope over the last days
How weird. It's almost as if 90% of amateur anything Youtube channels are actually advertisement businesses pushing the sponsored product of the day on their audiences. So weird.
Because a new model was just launched and they are allowed to publish the reviews now.
Yea thanks OP for tricking me into reading a several-page machine-generated ad. I'm sure forfeiting your dignity was worth a free telescope.
There is something fundamentally different about actually looking at Jupiter... The image might be faint, imperfect ... But it is live.
The astrophotography/live viewing split in astronomy is interesting. For me, the whole reason I do backyard astronomy is to find the objects myself and observe directly, to the point where even using an app like Stellarium feels a bit like cheating.
> even using an app like Stellarium feels a bit like cheating.
Personally, I have no computers, phones or any electronic crap when I'm observing the sky. Just me and a manual telescope.
I look at the sky to get away from all that shite.
How do you locate celestial bodies like that? Is it just a case of paper maps and a compass?
You really need to ask?
Lets just say there is no need for a compass!
Yes, I really need to ask. How does one locate Saturn in the night sky without an electronic aid?
Can confirm, they're a lot of fun. Especially for the person who wants minimal setup fuss and just to snap some pictures of the heavens.
I have a Dwarflab DWARF 3 (also mentioned in the post) that I highly recommend. It’s one of those gadgets that ended up using more than expected when I bought it. I toss it in my luggage and I got to capture really nice sky pictures with little effort (Marfa TX, Patagonia, latest total solar eclipse in Spain)
I'm interested in your eclipse experience. I tried capturing totality with a seestar S50 back in the 2024 eclipse. What I found is that at the very moment of totality, I had not removed the solar filter fast enough, and the bloody thing lost lock on tracking the Sun. Rather than fiddling with the equipment, I immediately started to ignore the 'scope and just experienced the eclipse.
That was the right thing to do!
But removing the solar filter right at the moment of totality is such an edge case (both for the software and my wetware which was kind of overwhelmed) that I wonder how others dealt with it?
I was capturing video and removed the magnetic solar filter as quick and carefully as I could. It worked but didn’t love the results. Hard to not move the telescope a bit that causes realignment and then obviously it has to readjust exposure that takes a moment. Same when putting it back after totality. I’m also looking for advice. We have another chance next year in Spain!
Yes indeed! Spain, next year! (And Australia, the year after that! ;-) )
I'm also wondering about the feasibility of taking these gizmos on airplanes, what with the Lithium battery packs, etc.
What we really need (for some definition of need) is a robot-filter-remover, timed to deal with the two critical times (first and last instant of totality; 2nd and 3rd contacts from memory). Anybody out there interested in building something like that? It would be purely a passion project, because it could only be used a few times a decade...
I’ve flown with it a handful of times without issue. Both in cabin luggage and checked in but I guess I’m risking it in the latter.
Not sure how a robot filter remover would work on the DWARF 3 that is reliable and works around loss of alignment and the exposure adjustment. I would love to find a solution for next year. Also wonder how can one test it out beforehand. I don’t want to burn the sensor ha ha
Agreed!
Also, I just found this (total hack, but cool)! [1]
[1] https://github.com/nsuan/TelescopeFilter
So like others in this thread, I bought a used telescope, a 8" Dobsonian in my case, and it's absolutely massive, like 5 feet tall. Totally different than this SeeStar. And I don't see things like the photos in this article through my telescope. Those nebulas? No way.
So I have to ask - am I getting a more "genuine" viewing experiencing? Are stacking and perhaps AI enhancements reflecting the real night sky? Or is SeeStar/iPhone/Pixel output drifting more towards generative art?
Looking directly through? Or taking photos through?
With photos you can have a longer exposure and see things too faint for the naked eye, not just too small. I'd guess that's what's happening here. You could very probably blow this smart cam out of the water with pictures taken through your telescope. Especially if you can have it track whatever you're shooting to allow very long exposures
The main problem here is - purely visual, you will have a very hard time seeing galaxies and pretty much no chance of seeing nebulae, specially in color. The objects are pretty faint and at best, you will see a milky smush. Those nebulae I capture send out light in wavelengths not visible to the human eye, so you'll have no chance of seeing them live.
There are some night-vision eyepieces which boost contrast and lightness - really cool but also pretty expansive.
> am I getting a more "genuine" viewing experiencing? That's a nearly philosophical question and the answer is yes and no. You will be able to see object you normally would not and the image you get is correct in the way that colors for example represent certain gases, so they are not fake, but also not realistic in the way of how you would see it with your naked eye.
> The objects are pretty faint and at best, you will see a milky smush
With an 8 inch dob, things like globular clusters are going to look granular and pretty amazing in reasonably dark skies. Similar for bright nebula.
But, yes, it's a philosophical question.
I already knew what telescope this was before I clicked the link. I've had one for a few years now. It's an awesome tool that has improved over time. You can leave it out all night now if you want and program a schedule.
Author here, thanks for sharing my post =)
Quick question: Did you use AI for that post?
Oh, use they did, 100% Pangram score for a whole text doesn't come from small polish.
Just for the final polish, the post itself is written by myself.
It’s not bad, but does start sounding like AI if you’re familiar with their writing style:
> Gradient correction. Noise reduction. Separating stars and nebula. Stretching the faint structures carefully. Working on contrast and colour. Putting everything back together.
As in, rewrite? Your earlier blog posts don't sound like this
Thank you for sharing!
A small piece of feedback: it is a really interesting article, but also quite grating to read. I'm guessing you used AI to review/edit, and it seems to have added a lot of filler and coated the piece with its own writing style.
I found a pre-AI post much more pleasant to read: https://adfr.io/thoughts/20240207_time_travel
It was extremely informative; I didn't even know these things existed. It opens up several interesting alternatives for teaching kids.
> At a few hundred euros, I am no longer asking whether a smart telescope can replace a serious visual telescope
Well, I bought a used 8 inch (203mm) telescope for 500€ a few years ago. Used telescopes can be very cheap.
I plan on grinding my own. That seems like it can be cheap too.
I've never done this, but I suspect it will be like pretty much every other DIY project. It looks like it could be cheaper at first, but in the end turns out to be more expensive than projected for any of the reasons DIY projects end up like that.
Absolutely, and I highly recommend starting that way. The comparison was meant against building up a photography rig with similar capabilities. Even with used components, it's gonna be hard to get into this price range.
If you are buying think through whether you want a wider field of view (S30 series) or more details (S50 series). S30 might be a better bet for amateur viewing.
When I bought my telescope, there was a dedicated physical brick&mortar store with knowledgeable people on staff. I had done a little browsing online to get an idea, but it was the staff that really sold me. The very first question I was asked on what I primarily wanted to view with the telescope: solar system bodies or deep sky objects. I chose wide field for DSOs. Sadly, that store closed about a year after my purchase.
Saying all that to expand on how the wide field or not is an important decision. If you primarily think of a telescope giving detailed magnified views of the moon or similar, then you will not be happy with a wide field regardless of how powerful of an eyepiece you use.
I hate that the LLM era has turned me into a detective every time I read a piece of writing but… this prose is very AI-speak, no?
Yup, exactly what I noticed. And I do think the content is really cool but the writing, the section titles, the entire site design, it all reminds me of ai :(
Not to say anything negative about the author though, im sure this took a long time to put together whether it was written with ai or not. But I definitely noticed those ai-isms
Perhaps it's better to ponder whether or not it contains information useful to you / is a pleasure to read?
AI-prose may be vetted, but there is no way for a reader to know that for certain as much AI-prose is not.
As such, you cannot be sure if the writing contains correct and accurate information at all, even with modern models.
> you cannot be sure if the writing contains correct and accurate information at all
how is that related to LLMs?
Maybe I’m a Luddite but I find AI prose completely tiresome to read, and its presence in an article forces me to be skeptical about whatever the author wrote. The latter was obviously a problem pre-AI but these tools simply make it much easier to tell stories, narratives, etc. that aren’t yours.
Yeah, and there is no pleasure reading this. It's way too long and verbose for what it's trying to say. I'd much rather read the prompt, in bullet points or whatever format they were provided before inflating a few example pictures and notes into a short novel
How is this criticism not just ad hominem slop? You could have said "It's way too long and verbose for what it's trying to say". The writer is orthogonal.
The idea that the writer is orthogonal is WILD
I'm really sick of LLM writing.
Nice post, and the only sort of 'advertising' that works for me, ha.
They are out of stock unfortunately, though perhaps the pro is worth the higher price.
Now I gotta go buy one