Reviewing the Seestar S50 Smart Telescope

When I purchased the Seestar S50 last March 2024, I had high hopes, and initially, the telescope met or exceeded these expectations. As a nature photographer, I enjoy photographing new things. However, astrophotography always proved difficult. I was seeking something I could remove from the box and, after some initial setup, immediately target the desired object—whether that object was within or without our solar system.  At first, the telescope worked as described. I could set it up, which includes calibration of the compass, adjusting the level, and syncing to iPhone, and then instruct it to Go to the Moon. It went off with some pretty satisfying results. Even without photo stacking, the quality was a notch or two above acceptable, but not high resolution.  

Then, the updates began. As soon as Seestar began sending updates, the problems started.  The first issue became an inability to go to the moon.  The telescope would go to within .01% of the location and stop.  If one gave up and canceled the mode and tried manually navigating to the moon, it would appear much like the sun without the appropriate filtering.  I tried reporting the issue, and Seestar support was quite awful, acting as if this was an entirely new issue for them.  Of course, I knew from my Facebook Seestar groups that this was a known bug resulting from a bad update.  Seastar demanded screenshots, reported tax liabilities, personal secrets, etc.; you get the idea. They were not the picture of cooperation and helpfulness they liked portraying themselves as.

So, to add insult to injury for purchasers of this $500 bunch of optics and chips, Seestar decides to send additional updates before fixing this problem.  While this update includes “cute” starfield effects, sadly nothing remotely helpful to address the prior issue.  Meanwhile, I learned a workaround in one of the FB groups by which you can go to a deep space item first and then successfully go to the moon. I have no idea why this usually works, but it does.  Still, instead of having the equivalent of a new car with all the bells and whistles, it’s feeling more and more like a Vega.

The next issue developed with yet another update. I didn’t even recognize it until others mentioned it; I assumed it was the cold. The telescope’s visual output goes dark after about half an hour of viewing. Again, this may be a temporary issue addressed with a future update or a convoluted workaround. Still, as of right now, it seems yet another user stumbling block to enjoying the purchased product.

It's an interesting (modern) problem in that today's unit is not the same machine it was described as when purchased; it has been fundamentally altered by incompetent user updates—error built upon error, rushed to production. On a side note, ZWO, a Chinese company, manufactures this telescope. If you’re anything like me, you’re trying to avoid buying goods from China and instead opt for US or European options.

So, what do Seestar S-50 owners do with a telescope that seems incompetently supported? One thing is for sure: I would steer clear of any other products from this company, particularly until they demonstrate competence in updating all their product lines.

Update: One lesson I recently learned about this telescope was the importance of shutting down and completely recalibrating after each move from one part of the property to the next--even on the same night.  Doing this last time seemed to improve performance quite a bit.

Saint Faustina and a New Catholic

I've been participating in a Sunday morning class/discussion group on Saint Faustina, which raises some interesting points. (First, you can learn more about this video series from the Augustine Institute here.) We came into the Catholic Church from the Protestant tradition, and I don’t accept "new" things easily. However, one of the reasons we ultimately joined the Catholic Church was the ministry of John Paul the Great. In short, when I understood that this man supported this message and, in fact, made it his life’s mission no less, it seemed apparent that there must be great truth in what Saint Faustina brought to the Church.

 

I have always been interested in eternal time, and a tiny facet of our Sunday discussion hit upon this concept. I tried to go back to the video we viewed to watch the section of interest again, but this is something my parish purchased. I then thought, well, I will view a video of the August 17, 2002, dedication of the Divine Mercy Shrine in Krakow-Langiewniki, Poland, but that was easier said than done. Several sites had John Paul the Great’s Homily, but no one had the event video. After an hour of searching online, I changed my search terms to Polish via an online translator. This brought me to the link below; I only found one.

 

After all of this drumroll, I am not sure my observation is worth it. So, the video from the Augustine Institute that I mentioned in the first paragraph fulfilled the prophecies of Saint Faustina on the day of the dedication. This raises an interesting question. Assuming that the prophecies were indeed fulfilled, were they fulfilled to a degree through John Paul the Great’s own knowledge and readings of the saint’s predictions before that day or by something more external? In other words, was this a self-fulfilling prophecy? (Another similar example of this is found in the Third Secret, which concerns killing or grave injury to a pope.  Were the prayers of the faithful for John Paul the Great following the assassination attempt enough to alter one unfixed possible outcome of the world's timeline?)

 

But then I considered a difference between fulfilled prophecy between Judeo-Christian and, say, those revealed by Greek tragedies. Take Sophocles’ Oedipus, for instance; while the man at the center of the Oracle of Delphi indeed did those terrible things, his involvement in his own demise was shut off from him; he was not a party to the knowledge. (Of course, that's the point with Oedipus, but you find a similar sort of non-voluntary cooperation in the tragedies.) On the other hand, consider passages such as the one below.

 

10  Then the disciples came and said to him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” 11 And he answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. 12 For to him who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. * 13 This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. 14 With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah which says: ‘You shall indeed hear but never understand, and you shall indeed see but never perceive. 15 For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are heavy of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should perceive with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn for me to heal them.’ 16 But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. 17  Truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

 

PRESS, IGNATIUS. Ignatius Bible: Revised Standard Version - Burgundy - Second Catholic Edition (p. 2434). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

 

There is an interesting sense in which a person (such as John Paul the Great) is invited to participate in God’s plan of free will. In contrast, Greek literature may betray a different, more predestined sense. Of course, looking beyond the tragedy genre, we see examples in Greek literature where the protagonists use the information from the oracle for their own advantage, such as when Odysseus visits Teiresias. I don’t believe this sort of cooperation lessens the significance of an associated prophecy being fulfilled. In fact, I think the voluntary cooperation may even further solidify it.*

The video also touches on coincidences, saying there is no such thing in God's plan. While this may be a slight overstatement, it's largely accurate. It also holds true for the author. Nothing more quickly sends a work of fiction to the trash than the author relying on haphazard coincidences to move the plot forward. Of course, this only makes sense since God is the Author with a capital A,

 

Other interesting dimensions of the dedication, such as the eternal time dimension, make nice content for another post. Still, due to the associated links, these few paragraphs have already taken most of the evening.

 

Related Links

The Dedication Service

The Poland Trip (including homily)

John Paul the Great's Page on Vatican Site

Saint Faustina / Mary Faustina Kowalska

Saint Faustina Resources on Catholic Answers

Saint Faustina Diary (Amazon)

*Having begun writing on this topic, the complexity is potentially more significant than I realized. Possibly not the best observation for a blog post.