I’ve dabbled in amateur astronomy for many years, but I’ve never really gotten into astrophotography because, frankly, I didn’t have the patience. Or the funds. Especially considering where I live. It’s a Bortle 6 zone not far from Seatltle, so observing conditions are rarely great. This time of year it’s mostly overcast.
In the last several years, though, we’ve got some amazing new devices coming on the market that make the hobby a lot more accessible. And in the last year or so they’ve become much more affordable. I just got my hands on a Dwarf Lab Mini. So far, I’ve only had one good clear night to really put it through its paces, but I’m already blown away at what I was able to capture with no real experience. This is the M81 cluster after about 4.5 hours of 60s subframes. The auto-stacked results looked okay, but I grabbed the FITS files off the device and re-stacked them using Siril, then did some post-processing using Seti Astro Suite. Really not much, though. It almost feels like cheating.
They definitely feel like cheating, but that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t get one.
I live in South Wales, in the UK, and probably have similar weather to you. I’m in a Bortle 5 site. For the handful of clear nights we get where I’ve also got the time and energy to get everything set up, I’ve got to hump and carry a load of kit into the garden, because it’s too heavy to take anywhere else, and hope I remember how to do everything again. The decent nights are so far apart that I usually need to get everything aligned again, and end up with some ok results if I’m lucky.
For about £500 I could buy a SeeStar and pretty much just plop it in the garden and let it go. I’d lose the feeling of accomplishment from getting the setup right and getting a good photo, but I get that so rarely that I honestly can’t remember the last time I enjoyed doing it. I’ve had more fun with a cheap little 70mm beginner scope because it just works.
In short, they look great, and there’s one on my wishlist 👍