Christmas Rosette with S30
Santa came early this year! My Seestar S30 arrived on December 22nd, 2024 and it just so happened that it was clear that evening. I had to try out my new toy! Some initial observations on the S30: I am…
Jason
The Begali Trifecta!
I now completed my collection of Begali Keys! In January 2023, I purchased the Begali Camelback straight key. It became my standard straight key for use at the main operating position. Being a lover of bugs, I ordered the Intrepid…
2024 160M Contest
It is that time of year again, Christmas Lights, Holiday Music, early dark evenings, frigid temperatures, and of course, the 160M Contest. My plan this year was to make a larger effort, but due to other activities, was only able…
More Seestar Mosaic Mode – M45
While recovering from Thanksgiving left-overs, I noticed a clear sky outside. I should do some imaging. It was quite clear and cold. I wanted to get a Mosaic of M45. I quickly set up the Seestar on the back deck…
Seestar vs. The Rig
I wanted to do a comparison between the Seestar and the The Rig. I picked the Cocoon Nebula because it is in a rich star field, and has some good color to highlight the difference. Details on each picture below:…
ARRL SSB Sweepstakes – 2024
Being a CW enthusiast, I am not really an SSB contester but I do like to dabble in it a little. I find SSB contests more exhausting than CW contests. This year, I made a goal to get a clean…
Slow Scan TV from the ISS
Many on the Amateur Astronomy Digital Voice Net have been enjoying Slow Scan TV (SSTV) from the International Space Station. Occasionally, ARISS has special SSTV transmissions from the Space Station that allow hams all over the world to capture pictures.…
Seestar Pixinsight Processing Tutorial – Finalizing your Image
This is the final section of the tutorial where we enlarge and save our file. Resample Resampling your image is an optional step. Enlarging the image will make better prints if you choose to do so. This will destroy the…
Seestar Pixinsight Processing Tutorial – Non-Linear Processing
If all is going well, you should now be in the Non-Linear phase of image processing done in the previous section. In this section, we will begin Non-Linear processing. HDRMultiscaleTransform HDRMultiscaleTransform is a plugin to compress the dynamic range of…
Seestar Pixinsight Processing Tutorial – Linear Processing
Now that the image is ready for processing in the previous section, it is time to start processing the image in Linear Space. Color Calibration with SPCC A recent addition to Pixinsight, the SpectrophotometicColorCalibration plugin has been a timesaver for…
Seestar Pixinsight Processing Tutorial – Preparing the Image for Processing
We now have a master light frame we created in the previous section, it is now time to prepare the image for processing. Rotate the Image The Seestar imaging chip is aligned vertically so to make a presentable image, I…
Seestar Pixinsight Processing Tutorial – Stacking with Weighted Batch Pre-Processing (WBPP)
In the previous section of this tutorial, we installed all of the required tools and plugins. In this section, we will begin by illustrating how to stack your images in Pixinsight. Setting up Working Directories One of the activities I…