ZWO Seestar S30 Pro review: a smart telescope built for backyard astrophotographers

Before devices like the ZWO Seestar S30 Pro, astrophotography used to be a complicated and expensive hobby. A traditional setup required a heavy equatorial mount, a telescope, a camera, a laptop running specialist software, and bags of patience.

Smart telescopes have changed that dramatically. These compact devices automate much of the process, handling alignment, tracking, and image stacking.

The Seestar S30 Pro is one of the most interesting and best value examples yet. Roughly the size of a small lunchbox and weighing just 1.65kg, it’s a fully automated telescope designed to photograph galaxies, nebulae and star clusters – as well as the moon and the sun – using nothing more than a smartphone.

Its biggest appeal is accessibility. Even from a light-polluted backyard, it promises something that once required expensive equipment: the ability to capture deep-sky objects with minimal effort.

ZWO Seestar S30 Pro review

Price and availability

The Seestar S30 Pro is available to buy now directly from Seestar for £599 / $599, placing it just above the entry-level smart telescope category. It’s more expensive than its ultra-compact rival, the DwarfLab Dwarf Mini, but still far more affordable than premium smart telescopes like the Unistellar and Vaonis Vespera range.

However, it is a step up from its forerunner, the Seestar S30, which sells for £419, $399, and AU$699. That’s because while the Seestar S30 (and the Dwarf Mini) boasts 2MP (full HD) images, the Seestar S30 Pro extends that to 8.3MP (or 4K).

In the box is a reasonably good-value range of accessories, comprising the telescope, a small yet very solid tabletop tripod, and a carry case with a shoulder strap. The only thing missing that might appeal to beginners is a solar filter, while advanced users may want to invest in an equatorial wedge ball head.

Features and what’s new

At its core, the Seestar S30 Pro is a 30mm f/5.3 apochromatic refractor telescope paired with Sony IMX585 (telephoto) and Sony IMX586 (wide-angle) sensors, both capable of capturing 8.3MP images at 4K resolution. These sensors are a significant upgrade over earlier Seestar models and produce noticeably sharper images.

The main telephoto camera handles deep-sky imaging while a secondary wide-angle camera offers a huge 63-degree field of view. This enables wide-field sky photography, constellation shots and even star-trail images.

It’s used in Milky Way Mode, though it’s best thought of as ‘big sky mode’ since it can image any patch of sky. Since the brightest parts of the Milky Way are only visible from May through October in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s best used for imaging constellations, which the Seestar can go to.

The telescope also includes built-in UV/IR cut and dual-band filters, designed to suppress light pollution and isolate hydrogen-alpha and oxygen-III wavelengths, respectively. The latter wavelengths are commonly emitted by nebulae, allowing them to stand out even under city skies.

The way this smart telescope works is like any other: it uses the stars to align to the night sky, slews to a target, takes short exposures and stacks them into an ever-evolving image. There is no eyepiece. It essentially makes it possible to see objects that no optical telescope will allow you to see from a light-polluted area.

New features are largely aimed at more advanced users. Aside from the jump in resolution, there’s an EQ mode that allows much longer exposures, making faint objects brighter; the ability to download FITS files for advanced stacking and editing; and Plan Mode for scheduling multiple targets overnight.

So, yes, you can stay in bed and have the Seestar S30 Pro collect data all night. Just check the weather forecast beforehand!

Setup and use

The biggest strength of the Seestar S30 Pro is just how easy it is to use. Setup takes only a few minutes. Power on the telescope, connect to its WiFi network using the Seestar app and place it on a tripod or flat surface. Once connected, the telescope automatically scans the sky and calibrates itself using the stars it detects. Within a couple of minutes, it’s ready to start imaging.

Selecting a target is done through the app’s built-in sky atlas, which lists galaxies, nebulae and star clusters currently visible from your location (it’s worth getting this far at home the night before you head off into the wild because there are often firmware and other updates that require a WiFi connection).

Tap an object and the telescope slews quietly into position before taking a sequence of short exposures, typically around 10 seconds each. These exposures are stacked in real time, gradually revealing the object as the telescope gathers more light.

Watching a faint smudge of light slowly transform into a recognizable nebula or galaxy as the telescope continues stacking images is one of the joys of having a smart telescope.

Leave it running for longer, and the image keeps improving. Bright targets such as the Orion Nebula appear within minutes, while galaxies and faint nebulae often benefit from an hour or more of total exposure time.

Because all image processing happens inside the telescope, you can leave it running outside and monitor its progress from indoors via WiFi. You can also let your phone and the ‘scope disconnect, linking back up to it, to better check on progress.

However, it would be handy if the Wi-Fi network the Seestar S30 Pro creates were a little larger, because even a small backyard can pose problems.

Despite its small 30mm aperture, the Seestar S30 Pro produces impressively good results on bright deep-sky objects. Very bright objects, such as the Orion Nebula (M42), appear quickly thanks to automatic live stacking, while faint galaxies like Bode’s Galaxy (M81) benefit from much longer observations. EQ mode is also easy to set up if you have the wedge and a jot of patience, thanks to an in-app guide that walks you through the process.

Planetary imaging is less impressive. With a focal length of just 160mm, planets such as Jupiter appear small and lack detailed surface features — though you can still see its large moons, Io, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. Much more impressive is the moon and the sun, with craters and seas on the former and sunspots on the latter, clear and detailed.

However, where the Seestar S30 Pro really stands out is in light-polluted cities, where its combination of automated stacking and built-in filtering allows users to see the wonders of the night sky that would otherwise be invisible to any optical telescope.

Verdict

The Seestar S30 Pro makes astrophotography easier than it has ever been. With a huge increase in resolution over the Seestar S30 – and the addition of advanced features like EQ mode – it removes many of the traditional barriers to the hobby.

These include aligning telescopes to three bright stars, setting up polar alignment and tracking, and image stacking; the Seestar S30 Pro replaces them with a compact automated telescope that does almost everything for you.

Sure, it’s not good with planets, but both beginners and more advanced users will love the Seestar S30 Pro — particularly those who live in light-polluted areas. If you’re in that 70% of people, the Seestar S30 Pro is one of the easiest ways to start exploring, imaging and sharing the night sky.

Also consider

There are a few alternatives to the Seestar S30 Pro worth considering. Perhaps the most convincing is the step-down Seestar S30, which is largely identical but offers lower resolution 2MP images.

Another is the DwarfLab Dwarf Mini, an even smaller smart telescope designed for quick imaging sessions, though also with lower 2MP resolution.

Another good option for travelling light is the step-up Vaonis Vespera 2, which, like the Seestars, has a mosaic mode for shooting large sections of the night sky.