Posted by ibobev 9/8/2025
There's something special about seeing the craters with your own eyes and then sharing that with friends. The framing & cropping, zoom, color of the sky are all unique to that experience.
Plus the moon is always looking slightly different each time, with different areas shadowed; fuzzy details one day are sharp the next.
And it's a skill like any other, which feels great to improve day after day.
Look up the other gear from ZWO the maker of the seestar.
Also how do the batteries hold up, or are you powering it off a cable then?
Roboscopes like the Seestar are an all-in-one kit and have internal batteries that last about 3-4 hours (although for the moon you don't need more than a minute or so). The S50 can take uncompressed video, which you can then process as GP describes but, compared to a more powerful setup, the camera is 1920x1080 and uncooled, the framerate is limited to 30fps, and it only has a 50mm aperture.
Its about having a hobby. Let us all be frivolous.
We often associate moon with night, and night with needing high ISO, long exposure and wide open aperture. And when you use the auto mode on camera's, that is indeed what you will get because even with telephoto lenses the moon is only a small part of the field of view, so the camera will base its exposure on the dark sky around the moon. That will case an overexposed moon, with a lack of contrast.
(Another issue you'll encounter trying the view or photograph the moon is that when viewed with large amplification, the moon is actually pretty fast and you're going to have to re-aim your camera regularly.)