I have had a passion for Astrophotography for a number of years having followed the likes of Astrobackyard and Nebula photos on Youtube and had that desire to take my own images however the amount of equipment required and learning curve for image processing has always put me off taking the jump.
The past few years has seen the explosion of smart telescopes which simplifies the whole process and can be run from an app on your smartphone and the images being produced have been very impressive. Combine that with the recent release of Astrowizard software from Luke which simplifies the whole Astro editing process especially useful for newcomers I decided to take the jump with the Seestar S50 Pro.
Within a couple of days of receiving my unit we had some clear skies so I decided first light should be on something big simple and bright and the obvious target in the Northern Hemisphere has to be M31 Andromeda galaxy.
I had a few issues setting up the telescope and aligning it with North star which after becoming frustrated became obvious that is was infact user error as is quite often the case! Once aligned I picked the target of Andromeda galaxy and the telescope whirred into action rotating and putting the target in the middle of the sensor. It autofocused and I was ready to begin imaging, I decided on the safer side and opted for 10 second images to begin with and collected 50 minutes of images.
I was very impressed as the image began stacking on my phone getting clearer with each image it took all the while I was sat inside the house keeping warm! I could have left the image as it was but I wanted to put it through Astrowizard to see what I could pull out of the data and wow I was super impressed, the software was so easy to use even as a beginner and it guides you step by step to produce a final image which can be seen above! I now have the bug and itching for some more clear nights so I can take more Astro images.
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