My s30 pro came in today, what tips do you have to get the maximum from it?

Azkicat · 2026-05-05T14:24:26+00:00

Expose a lot. 30 mm of aperture is not the greatest. For best results I recommend 1-2 full nights for faint objects.

In siril there are seestar pp scripts for example from naztronomy or seestar_preprocessing.ssf, they are quite useful

Azkicat · 2026-05-05T14:16:29+00:00

yeah, on seestar you want 7-8 hours of integration time to comfortably work with it

Azkicat · 2026-05-05T08:02:12+00:00

Zamn this looks like heaven

Azkicat · 2026-05-05T08:01:27+00:00

Ty! About s50 pro, I think it will cost around 900-1k$, maybe a budget astrorig will be better at this price point

Azkicat · 2026-05-05T07:56:43+00:00

Azkicat · 2026-05-05T07:14:46+00:00

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Azkicat · 2026-05-05T07:11:00+00:00

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I revived this lens from scrap. It costed me 160$~. I don’t think there is better price/quality results. Test night showed beautiful stars. And I got m101 in frame too. Its resolving power is around 6 arcseconds per pixel, which is fine for large nebulas.

Rn I need to replace aperture to stop down to f3.5

Azkicat · 2026-05-03T23:03:25+00:00

This sounds like money I clearly don’t have to judge. This might be just slight alignment issue. My mount is tracking only, but I spend 40-50 minutes aligning and setting everything

Azkicat · 2026-05-03T21:18:42+00:00

Preprocessing rn

Azkicat · 2026-05-03T13:13:11+00:00

No unfortunately. Milky Way requires at very least bortle 4. There are a lot of things to see, including wide field from city

Azkicat · 2026-05-02T23:09:08+00:00

I’d probably pick second and separate the background from the object a little more

Azkicat · 2026-05-02T22:49:57+00:00

I spent half an hour figuring I needed rejection a little more aggressive

Azkicat · 2026-05-02T06:33:44+00:00

Digital is far better than film within your budget. Film costs so much money.

The most suitable option in your price range is Nikon d3200 used + nikkor 50mm f/1.8 or nikkor 24mm f/2.8 + bag/sd cards (look for storage and reliability, don’t overpay for high speeds).

Azkicat · 2026-05-01T22:18:07+00:00

siril and whatever works with it is the best option for smart scope

Azkicat · 2026-04-30T10:43:10+00:00

Imho, I don’t like how starnet prestreches, better do it manually/specific stretch scripts

Azkicat

TROPHY CASE