ZWO Seestar S30 Pro Smart Telescope

The Seestar S30 Pro is the smaller, wider-field member of ZWO's Seestar family: a 30 mm camera-telescope and motorised mount in one body that weighs 1.65 kg and measures 210 x 140 x 80 mm. You choose a target in the free Seestar app on your phone, and it levels itself, works out where it is pointing, slews, focuses and starts taking short exposures, stacking them as it goes so the picture on your screen gets cleaner the longer it runs. There is no eyepiece; everything is seen and saved on the phone.

Inside is a 4-element apochromatic lens with ED glass, 30 mm across with a 160 mm focal length (f/5.3), in front of a Sony IMX585 sensor with a 1/1.2-inch surface and 8.3 megapixels. The field of view is 4.6 degrees, about nine full Moons across, which is the point of this model. Large targets that overflow a narrower telescope fit in one frame here: the whole Orion Nebula region with the Running Man, the Pleiades with their surroundings, the Andromeda Galaxy with its companions, and wide nebulae such as the North America Nebula. A second Sony IMX586 camera with a 63-degree view helps the telescope find its place and handles wide shots of the Milky Way and star trails.

For city skies it has the same built-in dual-band light-pollution filter as the larger Seestar S50 Pro, passing the hydrogen-alpha and oxygen-III light that emission nebulae give off. From a rooftop in Karachi, Lahore or Islamabad it brings out nebulae that are invisible there by eye. Galaxies shine in ordinary starlight, so the filter helps them far less, and a drive out of the city makes a clear difference.

Be clear about the trade-off against the S50 Pro, which we also sell. Thirty millimetres gathers about a third of the light of fifty and gives a smaller image scale, so small galaxies, planetary nebulae and the planets come out smaller and less detailed. Jupiter and Saturn are tiny discs at 160 mm focal length; this is not a planetary instrument. The Moon fits whole in the frame with room to spare. Choose the S30 Pro for wide fields, travel and the lowest weight; choose the S50 Pro for more detail on smaller deep-sky objects.

It comes with a magnetic solar filter for photographing the Sun and sunspots. Fit it before pointing anywhere near the Sun and keep it on for the whole session; unfiltered sunlight damages the sensor in seconds. During the day the telescope also works as a long lens for birds and distant landscapes.

The built-in 6000 mAh battery is rated by ZWO at about 6 hours (a lab figure) and charges or runs from USB-C at 5V/3A, so an ordinary power bank keeps it going through load-shedding or at a dark site. ZWO rates it for -10 to 40 degrees C; on the hottest summer nights in Sindh and southern Punjab, wait until the evening has cooled, and do not leave it standing in the sun before a session. It stores about 128 GB of images and connects to the phone over 5 GHz or 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi.

At 1.65 kg it fits in a backpack for a trip to the northern areas, a farmhouse or a school field, and setting up takes a few minutes with no knowledge of the sky. That makes it a good first instrument for a family, a school or anyone who wants deep-sky photographs straight away. An equatorial mode for longer exposures is available, but needs additional accessories and accurate polar alignment.

This is an imported ZWO instrument, sold on Telescopes.pk alongside our Made in Pakistan telescopes. If you want to look through an eyepiece yourself and see the planets in detail, one of our reflectors suits you better.