Seestar S50 Rejection Rate

Pexanul

Hi! I've been using my seestar s50 for about a year now with no problem. But since the latest update, the rejection rate went over 50%. I was capturing the m27 for about 4 hours and got less than 2 hours of data. The conditions were good, 10s exposure, m27 was going down in a straight line so there was minimum field rotation. First i tought it was just having a bad night. But today it does the same, after 2 hours it only got about 1 hour of data. Any ideas?
Thank you!

satch984

Pexanul

Full moon and probably use of lp filter.
Stars are very faint and seestar has difficulties to stack the images

Pexanul

Hi! So no matter what I do, the frame rejection rate is 50% or more. Any ideas? As I said, I have the telescope for a year, never had this problem

Pexanul

@Tech@ZWO Can anyone from zwo help me? My seestar is outside for an hour, only got 24 mins of data. 10 sec exposure, lp filter on, leveled at 0.1, no wind, no moon, no clouds and no rotation on my target, ngc7000 going down on a straight line. I before the last 2 updates I would get 40/45 mins of data in one hour

Daemon42

Could be worse. I tried mosaic mode last night on M42 under clear skies and got about 11 minutes of capture in like 75 minutes of real time. In non-mosaic mode it seemed to be capturing fairly reliably. It is certainly extremely hit or miss. I feel like it has something to do with gear lash causing it to not track causing star trails, but since it doesn't save discarded raw frames (something we've been asked for since day 1) we can't really know why it's unhappy.

Pexanul

Daemon42 forgot to mention, it wasn't on mosaic mode, just normal

Bobs_Seestar

After a week of success, I am now having the issue where the S50 does not seem to be tracking properly. Its level, the compass is calibrated, software is up-to-date, and I am attempting to image something low in the sky. I tried objects in the east and west. Every frame it takes has star-trails and is rejected. The three point "plate" alignment does not report any errors. Has anyone had success in finding a solution for this?

Bobs_Seestar

Bobs_Seestar
I believe I have solved the issue I have been having with dropped frames due to star trails. It seems that only the first object that you "goto" does the horizontal alignment (which takes three pictures to determine the orientation of the device.) This seems to override the "level-ness" of the device. If the first goto does not have a good view of stars to the right and left of the object, the S50 will not track correctly. Tonight I started by powering up the S50, then used the virtual joystick to aim (as best as I could) at a bright star (Sadr in the center of Cygnus). I then navigated to that star in the skyAtlas. I then pressed the sync button. This is a manual method to tell the S50 what it is looking at. Next I pressed goto (Sadr). The S50 hunted around for a short period of time and then found Sadr. It then did the "plate alignment" which is called horizontal alignment in the context of seeStar. After that I was able to reliably stack (enhance...) dozens of images without any star trails. I tried objects in the east, south, and west and had no issues.

Shakennstirred

read this elsewhere.
The issue is the automatic horizontal software part of the firmware is broken. This causes issues with the S50 finding objects and high rejected frames because the S50 is moving at the wrong rate compared to the stars. If you turn off the automatic horizontal option for now by disabling it and use the older original horizontal calibration system using the 2 circles to level the tripod, everything works.

Update fix being worked on, so use this workaround till then.

Tech@ZWO

We optimized on this in the next version, and will release it these week.

TvA9lJ62

Tech@ZWO Was this updated?

Gulyas K

Bobs_Seestar Well, this is a good solution, but I guess it's easier to swith the Horizontal calibration off. 🙂
Anyway the good question is why some users experience this star trail issue and the others do not. I'm among the lucky ones, because I have no issues with the new app/Fw at all. Actually the frame rejection is much better that with the previous version, no star trails, etc. I cannot imagine what the root of the issue is. What determines whether it occurs with some users and not with others?

Daemon42

Bobs_Seestar This all seems to boil down to where in the sky it's pointed when it does the horizontal calculation. Instead of the manual pointing, sync etc.. why not just select something high in the sky from the atlas, Go To, let it calibrate normally there, and then repoint at your low angle target? As long as stars are visible, I've never had it not find what it's looking for, thus no need for the Sync step.

LA3QMA

Gulyas K can it be related to how tight/firm its connected to the tripod? If its to loose i guess thats an issue. Other thing could be wind? I usually just put the tripod on the ground an use the bouble level. Then i connect the S50 and sometimes i need to align within the app. I'm not ruling out issues with hardware/firmware but to solve unsystematic errors more information is needed to narrow it down.

Gulyas K

LA3QMA Actually I have no clue. But my "tripod" is solid as hell. 🙂 I created a very solid iron arm in the skylight. It can hold over 100 kilos without bending even a tiny bit. I guess this is one secret of my very low frame rejection rate.

support

Hello, in planetary mode if the target is too small and not bright enough to use auto exposure, it will result in uneven brightness and planets tend to be overexposed. It is possible to use auto exposure, but you will need to adjust the gain when using auto exposure.
V2.2.1 is now available on our website and the exposure time has been changed from 2000us to 1s, so you can try again. Download link：https://www.zwoastro.com/software/

LA3QMA

Gulyas K Nice setup. But i do think that users can have it connected to the scope to loose or to tight even if the tripod is rock solid. I had this issue with a Meade ETX80. And also a similar issue with my Celestron Advanced VX. Anyhow i still use my S50 much more than my Skymax 127. Think of it i dont remember the last time i bothered to setup the celestron/skymax lol.

starnet59

Nice, I wish I had a skylight too.

Gulyas K

LA3QMA Same here! I have a C11 on AZEQ6 in my roller roof home observarory. But I'm a lazy s*it and it's more simple to use Seestar than the big gear. 🙂

LA3QMA

Gulyas K Usually the weather is changing so fast that using the S50 then i get images as i can do it in less than 5min and acquire images as long as the sky is clear. But i do get that the astro hobby is always wanting to get more. I weigh the price against how many minutes in a year I have time and the weather is ok. Then the S50 gives me more for the money. Could always spend 10x more but then its more work and this astrothing is more as a second hobby for me. But everything out in the universe has always fascinated me.

Support@Seestar

TvA9lJ62 The Eq Mode is still in development, not sure when the update will be, but it should be soon.