Last night I aimed my Seestar S50 at one of the most iconic deep-sky objects in the northern hemisphere, M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. Even though this neighbouring spiral galaxy lies over 2.5 million light-years away, the Seestar S50’s compact design and intelligent tracking made capturing it a smooth and rewarding experience.
Technical Details
Target: M31, Andromeda Galaxy
Telescope: Seestar S50 (EQ Mode)
Exposure: 988 subframes × 20 seconds
Processing: Stacked and calibrated in PixInsight with finishing touches in Adobe Photoshop
Location: Bortle 5 sky
Capture Date(s): 24 / 25 July 2025
Despite shooting under a Bortle 5 sky, the Seestar pulled in an impressive amount of detail. After stacking and careful processing in PixInsight, the final image revealed Andromeda’s sweeping spiral arms, dust lanes, and the warm glow of its galactic core. A little refinement in Photoshop helped bring out subtle colour variations and enhance the contrast without overprocessing.
The Seestar S50 – A Smart Telescope That Delivers
This session is another great example of what the Seestar S50 can achieve in EQ mode. For a portable smart telescope it continues to impress, especially for beginners and those who want to capture deep-sky objects without heavy equipment or complicated setup. The automated alignment and tracking made it easy to spend more time focusing on composition and data quality.
Andromeda: A Window into the Universe
M31 isn’t just a beautiful object. It’s our closest galactic neighbour and a preview of the future. In about 4.5 billion years Andromeda and our Milky Way are destined to merge, forming a vast elliptical galaxy. Capturing it from my own back garden with a telescope small enough to fit in a backpack was both humbling and exciting.
This image will also serve as the foundation for a future image processing walkthrough on Keen Astro, where I’ll show step by step how I stacked, calibrated, and finished this data using PixInsight and Photoshop.
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