Helix Nebula - NGC7293

[Whitters]

Imaged with Seestar S50 over eight nights from 3rd October to the 29th November 2024. All ten second integrations. Imaging time 11h 20m 10s of which 9h 8m 20 seconds were used in the stack. Aligned and stacked in Siril and processed in Pixinsight, GraXpert, NoiseXterminator, BlurXterminator and Curves.

[Carole]

Wow, that's a hell of a lot of 10 sec subs. 
But a great result and benefits from long integration time.

Nice to see the Helix which is very low in UK. 

[Carole]

I make that 2796 exposures, am I right or have I misunderstood!!!!!!

[Dave A]

Thats a great image

2796 exposures is a lot

I have a Seestar S50 but have only so far captured images where I have done 10 second exposures for around 40 minutes- not for 11 hours or more

Was the 11 hours and 20 minutes done continuous ?  If so did you have to keep your mobile or tablet close by for wifi

[Carole]

@Dave A
The more data the less noisy the image and better clarity.  The image above certainly shows both. 

[Dave A]

Yes, i understand about more data less noisy etc-  but was not sure if Seestar can take exposures continuous for 11 hours

[Rick]

Was the 11 hours and 20 minutes done continuous ?

The description answers that:

over eight nights from 3rd October to the 29th November 2024

...so presumably a number of shorter periods. It also gives an indication of how much of the data was discarded.

[Whitters]

Hi Dave,
How long you image depends on the size of the object, because the Seestar is an Alt Az mount you will get field rotation. My longest were in the region of three hours I think. You will see the effect of the field rotation in the image and you just need to crop out the noise caused by the rotation. So its a bit of trial and error. The Helix is low in the Southern sky so that puts a natural limit to the maximum exposure per night.
If you mount the Seestar in Equatorial mode, there are You Tube videos which show how. Then the field rotation is less of an issue so long as you have a reasonable polar alignment. I've not tried that yet, but it is on the list of things to do.

[Whitters]

I make that 2796 exposures, am I right or have I misunderstood!!!!!!

Hi Carole, 3290 exposures were stacked for the image.

[Dave A]

Hi Paul,

You have certainly captured some great images with your Seestar-  I have not been so productive with my Seestar

So I have some questions that hope you will be able to help me with - I have done a few 30 min or 40 min total exposures
I was never sure if you could save the data on the Seestar app and carry on another day to get more data for the original image-  How do you save it and go back to it another day ?

When you have done your 3 hour or so total exposures did you have to keep your mobile or tablet with Seestar app opened next to the Seestar for the whole time ?