The Seestar S50 smart telescope by ZWO is truly an amazing product that is powerful, portable and affordable. At only $500.00 this telescope will bring you closer to all that you can and cannot see in the night sky.
There is a reason that this product is taking the astrophotography hobby by storm. First and foremost, it is very simple to use. I took my first image of the Orion Nebula, M 42 only 10 minutes after setting it up in the driveway of my house. The user interface is intuitive and straight forward.
Plus, its only $500.00! You’ll spend that much and more on a “hobby killer” first telescope. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Celestron 8SE visual telescope. For planetary observation there is not much that can touch it for the price ($1,500.00). Both scopes have their purpose and special features. Oh, and the Seestar includes a solar filter that lets you take great pictures of the sun too.
ZWO is constantly updating the firmware of the Seestar to add new features and useful tools. In recent weeks they’ve added the long awaited Mosaic mode that lets the unit image a larger area around a target and then it “stitches” them together to make one larger mosaic. Additionally, they added an AI noise reduction tool that helps to clean up background image noise and make your pictures pop.
So, yes I would highly recommend the Seestar as your first scope or if you are a visual only astro, it will help you see in beautiful colorful detail, what only appeared as a “white smudge” in the eyepiece of your scope.
Carlos Garcia
