Nice, clear, and very cold night. The bright Moon rose in the east a little after 7 PM. Since it was clear I had a go at another mosaic from the SeeStar using SeeStar Alp. This time on the area around the Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula. All my connectivity issues are worked out and I had no problems with connections to SeeStar Alp or to the SeeStar itself.

I received the 10,000 mAh battery banks I ordered earlier in the day. Charged one up and used it for the first time during this session. The SeeStar was powered on for nearly 5 hours and it ran from the battery bank that entire time. When I powered down after 11 PM the battery bank was showing 1 remaining bar and the SeeStar battery was still at 100%.

Once it was dark I ran the SeeStar Alp start up sequence. This initializes the SeeStar, opens the arm, autofocuses, shoots darks calibration frames, and does an alignment (horizontal calibration). The dew heater is turned on at 60%. Each of these functions completed without issue. After the start-up was complete I selected NGC 2023 in Stellarium and tested the Goto in SeeStar Alp. The SeeStar slewed and the live view showed NGC 2023 in the center of the FOV.

Equipment and Software
	ZWO SeeStar S50 on a CG5 Tripod with an external power bank.
	Simple SeeStar Controller with SeeStar Alp on a Raspberry Pi
	4×4 SeeStar Alp Mosaic, Panels stacked by SeeStar, Mosaic Processed with PixInsight

I set up the mosaic centered on emission nebula NGC 2023. A 4 x 4 panel mosaic with a 40% overlap, 15 minutes per panel, at gain 110, and the light pollution filter enabled. The SeeStar collected about 4 hours of light across the 16 panels.

The Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) and the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024) are located in the constellation of Orion. The Horsehead is a dark nebula which is in front of the emission nebula IC 434. These regions are between 1,200 and 1,500 light years from Earth.

Here is the autostretch of the panels after stitching them together in PixInsight before doing any cropping or processing.

This is what I was able to get after a bit processing with PixInsight – cropping, rotating, denoising, stretching, and sharpening.

Alnitak is the bright star just above the Flame Nebula and is one of the three stars which makes up Orion’s belt. NGC 2023 is the nebula near the center of the FOV between the Flame Nebula on the left and the dark Horsehead Nebula on the right.

Not too bad for the amount of time per panel (6 to 12 minutes each after dropped frames). I’ll keep practicing. The SeeStar S50 is an amazing little telescope.

Probably my last processing with the Free Trial of PixInsight. My trial expires in a couple days… going to have to submit the order.

Clear skies…