Seestar S30 Pro

The Seestar S30 Pro is a smart telescope from ZWO, from the same family as the Seestar S50. Like its sibling, it combines a motorized mount, optics, camera and controls in a single device, operated through a smartphone app, and lets you do astrophotography without assembling a set of separate parts.

What it is

It is a 30 mm aperture apochromatic refractor with a 160 mm focal length (f/5.3), featuring a four-element optical design and ED glass, which reduces false colors around stars. The main camera uses a Sony IMX585 sensor of 3840 × 2160 pixels (8.3 megapixels). The field of view reported by ZWO is 4.6°, measured diagonally, which corresponds to about 4.0° × 2.2°.

Two cameras

In addition to the telescope camera, the S30 Pro has a wide-angle camera (Sony IMX586 sensor, also 3840 × 2160 pixels, 3.4 mm lens and f/1.75 aperture, with a 63° field of view), designed for wide fields such as regions of the Milky Way.

Capabilities

• Imaging: 8.3-megapixel sensor at 4K resolution and real-time image stacking.
• Storage: 128 GB of internal memory.
• Battery: 6000 mAh, with about 6 hours of runtime in ZWO laboratory tests.
• Weight: 1.65 kg, which makes it easy to take to another location.
• Mount modes: alt-azimuth and equatorial. ZWO describes the equatorial mode as a way to compensate for Earth’s rotation and keep targets tracked for longer in long exposures, and states that it requires additional accessories.

Possibilities

The wide field is the S30 Pro’s strong point. Extended targets that the S50 can only frame in parts fit entirely: the Pleiades (M45, about 2° across), the Orion Nebula and its surroundings, the Carina Nebula and rich regions of the Milky Way. The wide-angle camera also lets you capture much larger areas of sky, such as entire constellations and stretches of the Milky Way.

Compared with the Seestar S50

• Aperture: 30 mm on the S30 Pro and 50 mm on the S50. The S50 gathers more light per exposure.
• Focal length: 160 mm on the S30 Pro and 250 mm on the S50. With the shorter focal length and a larger sensor, the S30 Pro sees a much wider field, which favors large objects.
• Sensor: Sony IMX585, at 4K resolution, on the S30 Pro; Sony IMX462, at Full HD, on the S50.

With different focal lengths, the two cover different framings: the S50, with its tighter view, suits smaller objects better; the S30 Pro, with its wider view, suits extended objects.

Specifications according to the official ZWO page.

At the Astronomia no Telhado Observatory

Here the Seestar S30 Pro works in equatorial (EQ) mode, like the S50. The sections below bring together the field-of-view simulator, the results processed in AstroFITS v2, ongoing projects, captured objects, recent captures and finished images.