Why I recommend the ZWO Seestar S50 Pro smart telescope for your backyard — full review

The moon was already deep in Earth’s umbra when I pointed the Seestar S50 Pro at it during the spectacular deep partial lunar eclipse on Aug. 28, 2026. At maximum eclipse, 96% of the moon was inside Earth’s dark central shadow, leaving only a bright sliver illuminated by direct sunlight. The rest had turned a wonderfully strange pinkish-red.

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It was exactly the kind of event I increasingly use a smart telescope for. I’m slightly obsessed with photographing the moon at a moment’s notice and have built up quite a collection of images of it in different phases, but a lunar eclipse is different. It changes quickly, so there’s no time to spend ages setting up equipment. With the S50 Pro, I could get outside, switch it on and start taking images. That was crucial because to capture this eclipse I had to be up at 03:30 a.m. and out to a location in time for a view of the rare near-totality. Setting up for hours wasn’t an option.

That grab-and-go simplicity is why I like the S50 Pro. I can chuck it out on the decking whenever the sky clears and find whatever I’m in the mood for. Sometimes that’s the moon. Sometimes it’s a comet or a galaxy. Earlier in September, it was a newly discovered supernova in NGC 7331.

What’s new on the Seestar S50 Pro?

I’ve used the original Seestar S50 for years and more recently traveled with the smaller Seestar S30 Pro, but the $999/€999 S50 Pro is the most capable Seestar I’ve ever used. Like the original, it has a 50mm aperture, but it adds a much larger 8.3-megapixel sensor, a wide-angle camera and, with an optional equatorial mount, the ability to take exposures lasting up to 60 seconds (instead of the usual 10 seconds) and export FITS files for post-processing. That’s some serious astrophotography chops.

However, specifications aren’t really why I think it’s ZWO’s best smart telescope yet. It’s because the S50 Pro lets me do some simple or complex astrophotography without it taking over my night — and the next day.

The longer you leave it alone, the better the images get

The lunar eclipse showed how quickly the S50 Pro can capture something happening in the sky, but my favorite thing about it is almost the opposite — I can leave it alone.

Last week I photographed the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way, and a popular favorite object in the night sky. It’s huge, bright and has incredible dust lanes, but producing a detailed image of it is another matter.

The S50 Pro did all of the hard work. Its app finds the target, the telescope plate-solves the stars to establish exactly where it is, slews across the sky, centers the object, focuses and starts taking short exposures. Within minutes, an image begins appearing on a smartphone or tablet. The temptation is to stop there, download an image and share it on social media with a terribly cliché title like “Staring At The Shore of the Cosmic Ocean.” Resist!

One of the most important things I’ve learned from using smart telescopes is that patience makes a massive difference. The app even recommends how long to spend imaging particular objects, and for targets such as the Pleiades (M45), galaxies and particularly faint nebulas, that can mean leaving it working for at least a couple of hours.

Wonderful images slowly develop in front of you. As dozens and hundreds of 10-second exposures get stacked together, faint structure and color gradually emerge, while noise is reduced. The longer I spent imaging on the Andromeda galaxy (M31), the more impressive the result became.

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Best of all, you don’t have to stand next to it. I can leave the S50 Pro gathering photons while I do something else — stargaze, use a 'proper' optical telescope or use my DSLR on a tripod to take some other kind of astrophotography.

That matters to me because I’m a stargazer first. I embarked on my astronomy journey long ago to spend more time outside in the dark looking up and less sitting in front of a computer — or looking down at equipment.

I photographed a supernova from the deck in my backyard

One reason I like having a Seestar ready to go is that astronomy doesn’t always happen on a convenient schedule. In September, I used the S50 Pro to photograph SN 2026aaiv, a supernova in the galaxy NGC 7331 in Pegasus. This is precisely the kind of target I love hunting down with a smart telescope. Even through a telescope, there’s little chance of seeing anything, but the S50 Pro located the galaxy automatically and gradually built an image that revealed the stellar explosion. I had to zoom in and go right to the limit of its resolution to see it, but it was there.

There’s something enormously satisfying about walking outside to collect photons from an explosion that happened 45 million light-years away. Best of all, it took me about 15 minutes.

Traditional astrophotography can involve assembling a mount, polar aligning, connecting a camera, focusing, guiding and dealing with cables and software before the first useful exposure begins. What if the supernova — or anything else you’re targeting — drifts behind a tree or moves behind your neighbor’s house? The S50 Pro removes almost all friction.

The built-in processing saves hours of editing work

I know astrophotographers who love processing RAW and FITS files of deep-sky objects, carefully stacking and stretching data to extract every possible detail, and the results they produce can be spectacular. The S50 Pro caters to them, too. I connected it to my Mac, dragged off the individual FITS files and had a go at processing the underlying data myself.

It worked really well but I just don’t have the time or interest. That’s why I like the processing tools built into the Seestar app. It's got a new AI Enhancement mode that can produce a lovely image with an inky black background without requiring specialist software. You can adjust brightness, contrast, detail, color and even reduce the number of visible stars to emphasize a nebula, galaxy or star cluster. You can download JPEGs and enhanced images to your phone, which is particularly handy when traveling — and the FITS files remain available if you want to take processing further.

EQ mode changes what the Seestar S50 Pro can do

Even if you don’t want to indulge in post-processing — and definitely if you do — the S50 Pro’s optional equatorial mode is worth experimenting with. I got hold of ZWO’s TH10 Fluid Tripod Head specifically to try it and I was impressed by how straightforward it was. Setting up an equatorial mount normally involves accurately aligning its axis with the celestial pole. With the S50 Pro, the app guides you through the process and you don’t even need to identify Polaris, the North Star. I can find Polaris easily but that automation should become particularly useful when I use the S50 Pro south of the equator, where there is no similarly bright south pole star.

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Once aligned, Expert Mode allows exposures of up to 60 seconds. I went straight for the maximum. That’s still relatively modest compared with some conventional star trackers, so there is clearly a trade-off between the S50 Pro’s forgiving setup and ultimate tracking accuracy, but longer exposures without field rotation give it considerably more astrophotography potential.

It isn’t perfect. Once, after switching to EQ mode, my S50 Pro began searching for targets without successfully plate-solving, so it repeatedly missed them and effectively stalled my session. The app needs a 'sky align refresh' button for situations like that. There are other quirks. The app’s "best tonight" list regularly suggests planets, even though the 260mm focal length is far too short for satisfying planetary imaging. And observation scheduling — where you just give the app a list of things to image and it does it all itself — is excellent in principle, but the lack of weatherproofing makes me very reluctant to leave it outside unattended all night.

ZWO’s best Seestar isn’t its best travel telescope

There is one area where I think ZWO has gone backward — portability. I travel a lot for work, often to remote places, and for the last few years I’ve regularly traveled with the original S50 and, more recently, the S30 Pro. I had hoped the S50 Pro would simply replace them. I’m yet convinced that it will.

At 6.17 lbs (2.8 kg), the S50 Pro is still impressively compact considering what it contains, but its chassis is thicker. It doesn’t fit into my camera bag nearly as neatly, and, annoyingly, it has crossed the point where I can comfortably grip the body with one hand.

The original S50 also looked better. And please, ZWO, bring back black. This telescope is designed to be used at night. Why is it white?

For flights and trips where luggage space matters, I’ll probably continue taking the S30 Pro. That doesn’t alter my view that the S50 Pro is the better imaging instrument, but it’s a reminder that 'best' and 'best for every situation' aren’t the same thing.

Where the S50 Pro sits against its rivals

The S50 Pro’s high price also changes the conversation. The original S50 was so inexpensive for what it did that many of its compromises were easy to forgive. The S50 Pro is entering territory where buyers can reasonably compare it with more sophisticated smart telescopes — and even modular astrophotography equipment.

Smaller smart telescopes such as the S30 Pro remain more compelling for travel, while DwarfLab’s ultra-compact models emphasize portability. At the other extreme, instruments such as Unistellar’s Odyssey Pro offer larger apertures, an electronic eyepiece and citizen-science projects, but at a substantially higher price.

The S50 Pro sits in the middle. Its 50mm aperture gives it useful light-gathering ability; its larger 8.3MP sensor captures a generous 2.8-degree field; EQ mode gives enthusiasts better data to work with and the second camera adds Milky Way and star trail photography.

It may not end up traveling around the world with me regularly (although it definitely will be for the next total solar eclipse), but the S50 Pro has already become my favorite Seestar. It has enough features for users to grow into over a long period and it is so easy to use that it lets me enjoy the night sky on my terms.