New purchase of S30

bpV0umee

I have no experience with astrophotography and have been watching YT abd reading blogs for tips.

I have a few questions about the process of imaging. I have only done two sessions so far. One of M16 and the other of M7. The final product isnt what I was expecting. I am lucky enough to be able to have hours worth of clear sky to image throughout much of winter. My first question is about the S30's filter; is the filter ON or OFF when it is red? I am a little confused as when the icon at the bottom of the group to the right of the image capture screen, the one that displays labels next to the icons, is red the labels show and when its white the labels dont show. Therefore I assume that red means ON and white means OFF. Is this the case? Is the light pollution filter ON when its icon is red and OFF when it's white?

Next, last night I imaged for about four hours on M7. When I stopped imaging there is a flashing "processing" in red at the top left of the screen. Do I have to wait for this to dissapear before I turn the S30 off? How long does it go for? I waited approximately 30min but it was still flashing.

Lastly, I have the S30 set to not save the subs. There are 2 files saved on the camera, a JPG and a *.FIT file. The JPG is small less than 1MN and the *.FIT file is approximately 12MB. The JPG is 1080x1920. this seems pretty low image quality. When I look at the image in Lightroom it looks pretty poor.

I have looked for a work flow to go about imaging and not really found anything of use. I watched Trevor Jones's, Astrobackyard, review of the S30 and had pretty high hopes on what the S30 produces. I feel like its definitely me doing something wrong so would appreciate some advice/guidance. Attached is the result of last night's imaging. This is about 4 hours worth. Sorry I dont know how to see time and number of subs used in the stack (https://postimg.cc/KR3CWHz5)

starnet59

bpV0umee First of all, welcome to the world of astrophotography! I cannot help with M7 because it never goes higher than 11 degrees where I am, but I do have M16 images you can use to compare with yours. Oh, and I have an S50, not S30.

The longest capture of M16 I have is a stack of 198 10-second exposures, it most likely took about an hour to capture. The target was only 30 degrees high in the sky and imaged from a Bortle 8 zone. Here is the original JPG file saved by the telescope:

This was taken in Alt/Az mode, before we had EQ mode so you can see the effects of field rotation. After some postprocessing of the FIT file in Siril, upscaling by 2x to 2160x3840 and AI noise reduction with Aiarty Image Enhancer and some final tweaking in Paint.NET I got this image (I had to compress the JPG a little to get under the 2MB upload limit of this forum):

Is the image perfect? No, but for a 50mm glorified binocular (monocular actually) to see the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula it is remarkable in my opinion.

Support@Seestar

When the LP filter icon is red, it means the filter is ON. When it's white, it's OFF. Please make sure to turn it on before starting GOTO or after stopping imaging, as it cannot be changed during capture.
The JPG file is saved for quick preview on mobile devices. For proper viewing or post-processing, we recommend using the .FIT file, which contains the full data.
There's no special operation required, but we're constantly working on adding more tutorials. Could you let us know what kind of guidance would help you most?
Your result may appear low quality due to focus issues, light pollution, or edge star distortion. Try using the smart denoise feature and ensure the stars are sharply focused at the start — focus drift during imaging can affect stacking if single-frame saving is disabled.
Frame discards can be caused by environmental factors or vibrations during imaging. A stable setup is essential for better stacking results.

bpV0umee

Support@Seestar Thankyou for your reply. When I stop the S30 from imaging and I see the processing notification at the top left of the map is this something I have to wait to complete? If so how long does it take? Im assuming that if I need to wait until the task is completed that I need to stop imaging with sufficient battery power for the processing to occur.

Lilo

starnet59

24° of altitude, processed in Seestar app, Bortle 6-7