AstroPhotography takes front burner to Penturning (for now)

I bought a tiny, smart telescope in late March and it has taken front burner to penturning. I am amazed at most of the photos taken thus far but have spent more time waiting for clear skies and wind below 15 mph in the South Dakota summer. The thing weight 3 pounds and is about 8.5x11x3 inches in size so it is very portable. Setup takes 5 minutes with most of that waiting for the electronics to boot and calibrate.... then run indoors to escape the mosquito swarms. When looking high E-N-W, I can setup in the yard and leave unattended all night. For any E-S-W targets, I have to babysit it so that it doesn't grow legs and walk off.

Still learning its capabilities so there have been less impressive images due to me pushing the limits. While it's only an entry level $400 telescope, many die-hard photographers are replacing their expensive setups with this telescope and it's big brother.

The total exposure time is showing in the image watermark and is a combination of 10 and 20 second individual images stacked and edited.

Telescope, North America nebula, Andromeda, Rosette nebula

That telescope is cool and great photos. I still use my old Meade telescope and have been thinking of upgrading. Can you tell a little more about the telescope? Thanks!

It is a SeeStar S-30 $400 better suited for wider, nebula & more portable (1080 x 1920px). The SeeStar S-50 $550, has narrower field, better suited for smaller targets. The S-30 Pro coming out in Jan will have 4x the sensor of the S30.

Android or Apple app controls the feature & goto targets by name or coordinates if name is not on the db. I have edited the result image using in-app brightness, contrast, hue & cropping. There are external apps that are available but all have huge learning curves & this old fart doesn't have the patience or time for that. I'll put a couple of the raw images below when I get to my laptop.

Rosette image stack before edits. 104 individual, 20 second images stacked
Rosette single 20 second image

FB group that only allows images without external software enhancement (if you're interested)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1947804425697588

It's a really interesting telescope and the images look to be great quality. It's amazing that the telescope costs less than some of the lenses I have collected over the years. And no additional lenses are needed? I didn't realize anything like this was available.

Everything is built in & automatic. IR filter automatically applied to galaxy targets. LP (light pollution) filter auto applied to nebula but either can be manually switched. I have a 3d printed light/dew shield and also use a 10,000 mah usb charger pak to get through a whole night with the dew heater running. I had a sufficient camera tripod with fluid head for EQ/polar mount. Many people just use the default alt/az mount & deal with the field rotation. It does have limitations. 2k resolution but 4k digital workaround was introduced last week.

Our friend in Australia has one of each and uses them more than their high dollar megascopes.