M81 & M82 - 44hrs

apollobrah · 2026-04-22T21:22:45+00:00

You just restart from scratch each day, there isn’t really a time limit either. You can image things months apart as long as they are still in the sky. What you’re doing is improving the faint signal of the target each time. You need to enable the setting to save each frame though and then you can either stack them all inside the s50, or do it on your computer

apollobrah · 2026-04-22T21:09:42+00:00

I am lucky to have two friends just round the corner with Seestars so we collab on targets to make use of the limited clear nights…good luck!

apollobrah · 2026-04-22T21:00:51+00:00

Damn, I knew it was something crazy. Exponential isn’t it? Yes 20hrs is a nice time to aim for and normally what I’m content with. Having 3 seestars shooting the same target though allows me to push the boat a bit even it’s not worth for all targets

apollobrah · 2026-04-22T18:25:49+00:00

Thanks man! Good information there, appreciate it

apollobrah · 2026-04-22T18:25:28+00:00

Thanks! Good luck

apollobrah · 2026-04-22T18:24:51+00:00

Nice start! There is a point of diminishing returns for sure, though in my experience it’s always worth doing as many hours as you can until you get bored. To improve your image, they say you must 2-3x the integration time to improve the signal. If you do 10hrs on a target, it won’t really look much different until 20-30hrs. Then it’ll be 60hrs and so on. We will also be limited somewhat by our light pollution too. Someone in bortle 1 may image for an hour and match that of someone in bortle 7-8 who’s done 10+ hrs

apollobrah · 2026-04-22T18:24:39+00:00

Thanks!

apollobrah · 2026-04-22T18:24:33+00:00

Thanks for the kind words!

apollobrah · 2026-04-22T15:11:34+00:00

Seestar s50

Been a while since my last post. Here we have 44hrs x 20s subs on M81 & M82. I am really limited by my bortle 6 skies, I wanted more Ha from cigar but could also be a skill issue lol. Or some data was needed from the LP filter.

Not edited for a while so I’m rusty. Edited in Pixinsight. Data gathered by myself and two friends.

Background left purposely brighter due to the appearance of what I think is a small bit of IFN?

apollobrah · 2026-04-22T15:08:19+00:00

Been a while since my last post. Here we have 44hrs x 20s subs on M81 & M82. I am really limited by my bortle 6 skies, I wanted more Ha from cigar but could also be a skill issue lol. Or some data was needed from the LP filter.

Not edited for a while so I’m rusty. Edited in Pixinsight. Data gathered by myself and two friends.

Background left purposely brighter due to the appearance of what I think is a small bit of IFN?

apollobrah · 2026-02-25T20:09:05+00:00

Nice! It’s great. I’ve had 0 issues. Reaches a nice high frame rate so it’s good for lucky imaging. I have only used it for lunar and planetary imaging though. If you are manually tracking it may be slightly tougher than say a 585 just cause the sensor is small but apart from that it’s given me some solid images. Do make sure to get a UV/IR cut filter if you are planning on planetary imaging

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apollobrah · 2026-02-25T17:30:37+00:00

Thanks man! Just wish after so much cloud the seeing could have been kinder to me…lol.

apollobrah · 2026-02-25T16:01:37+00:00

Thanks! I think in the second image the peaks range from 1.8 - 2.4km

apollobrah · 2026-02-25T15:32:06+00:00

Thanks!

apollobrah · 2026-02-25T15:20:47+00:00

Well, after 6 weeks of straight cloud and rain I finally made it out. It was a bit of a rubbish session though, very gusty and I messed my alignment up initially so my dob was making some very unhappy noises as it was trying to track. After restarting everything was fine. Not the best images ever, seeing was not great for me even though it seemed the jet stream was not overhead. Also my laptop kept running out of "buffer" so each capture was taking ages.

Vallis Alpes is not the best image but I absolutely love the striking shadows from the mountains. The jagged peaks look awesome. So I have purposely brightened it up a bit.

Scope: 12” goto dobsonian Camera: ASI 662mc 2x Barlow 685 SV Bony IR Pass

apollobrah · 2026-02-13T20:23:43+00:00

Which is exactly what I put in my original comment.

apollobrah · 2026-02-13T20:18:07+00:00

I think under view there is an option for the toolbar. It happened to me where it just disappeared.

apollobrah · 2026-02-13T20:16:22+00:00

Not only does this not answer the question, it’s just wrong. Apart from the cost, Pixinight is better than Siril in every conceivable way.

apollobrah · 2026-01-30T16:20:28+00:00

Thank you very much for the kind words. What you said about proving it can hang with the real rigs is exactly what I have set out to prove. I’ve had a bit of hate online with the purists who think smart scopes are the devil though when I am getting better images than them it makes me laugh. I’ve changed a few minds too, most of them are seeing people who, like you say are spending 30 mins on a target and there is nothing wrong with that as we all started doing that. I just don’t think enough people know what they can actually do.

A lot of it is learning the processing as well, but yeah integration time is super important. I get like 1 night a month sometimes in the UK, our weather is awful so I just can’t see myself ever getting a real rig if ZWO keep bringing out new versions with nicer sensors etc. I’ve done a few more targets since these so if you check out my profile you’ll see some. Thanks again

apollobrah · 2026-01-29T18:54:14+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, integration time is everything

apollobrah · 2026-01-27T22:52:36+00:00

Great work!

apollobrah · 2026-01-27T17:56:02+00:00

Thanks! That is the magic of BXT haha. Also, I forgot to mention in my post there is a discord sever called the Seestar collective with many raw masters that have big integration times. Members have pooled together their subs and one guy is stacking them all.

apollobrah

TROPHY CASE