Tonight's astronomy meeting was different. It was supposed to be an observing night but it was partly cloudy so instead some members decided to make it a night where members who owned Seestar telescopes could gather and help each other learn to use these amazing instruments. The three white things up on the tops of the tripods are called "Seestar all in one smart telescopes." They are an amazing breakthrough in amateur astronomy. As the light pollution gets worse and worse each year, these devices can photograph objects in the night sky that can't be seen by our eyes. You set it on a tripod and then connect to it with an iPad or smartphone and you run it wirelessly. You choose an object that you want to see, and it automatically goes to that object and starts taking photographs and each photo is added to the stack of other photos and suddenly the object appears on your phone or ipad! It has changed amateur astronomy!
We had am amazing turnout tonight with perhaps 6 or 7 of these telescopes and a number of people who just came to observe. This photo, above and the two below were actually taken in darkness! I used my SONY a7 III camera with a "film speed" setting of 12,800! The normal setting for the camera is 400. And look what I can photograph with this incredibly sensitive sensor in the camera!
Here Don, one of our members is seated and running his Seestar which is up in the tripod behind him, from his iPad. One of the two members behind him also brought her Seestar and it is running off to one side while she is talking with another member.
Here Bill, on the left is discussing the operation of his Seestar with Mak, on the right, who is also running his telescops. There were lots of questions and answers tonight as members more familiar with their telescopes were helping people who had only recently gotten their own scopes. It was such a great evening with everyone helping each other learn this amazing new device.
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