Morrison Observatory at Central Methodist University has a new telescope! We were able to purchase a ZWO Seestar 30mm refractor. This is a do it all electronic telescope that is incredibly easy to use. It was purchased with the idea that the students could easily use it and then download the results.
The telescope has several elements to make it apochromatic and using a small sized sensor and electronic goto control through a phone app makes it easy to use. A student can download the free app then connect with the telescope. You raise the “arm” that holds the scope, punch the auto focus button when you get to a patch of stars, then tell it what target to image. That is it! If you puch AI Denoise throughout the exposure every few minutes you get a slightly better image but that is not really a must do.
ZWO Seestar 30
The telescope takes 10, 20, or 30 second images then stacks and rotates them. The longer the imaging session the better the image…to a degree. Like anything else there are limits. The darker the sky the longer you can image and stack. However, this stack and rotate method is the reason why you get such amazing images with such a small telescope! Below are some images taken with the Seestar 30.
