Seestar S50 Pro is here!

The announcement is finally out, so I can quit being careful about what has been sitting around here for the past several weeks.

Yes, we’ve had the new Seestar S50 Pro for a while, and we’ve been using it rather than simply looking at it. That distinction matters to me. You can learn a lot from specifications, but you learn considerably more when you put a telescope outside, use it night after night, make mistakes with it, push it a little harder than intended, and see what actually comes back on the screen.

The S50 Pro is an interesting telescope because I think a lot of people have been quietly waiting for it. Some S30 Pro owners want to know whether the larger aperture is enough reason to move up. Original S50 owners want to know whether this is really an upgrade. People with dedicated astrophotography systems are wondering how close these little smart telescopes are getting to the equipment they have spent years assembling.

And people completely new to astrophotography probably just want to know one thing.

Can I really take good pictures with this thing?

That is what we set out to answer in the September special issue of ScopeTrader.

What We Wanted to Know

The basic specifications are straightforward. The S50 Pro uses a 50 mm aperture with a 260 mm focal length and a four element folded APO optical system. The main camera is built around the Sony IMX585 sensor, and there is a second wide angle 4K camera sitting above it. It also has a larger battery, plenty of internal storage and a substantially improved mechanical drive system.

That tells you what is inside the box.

It does not tell you what owning one is actually like.

I have been doing astrophotography for a long time. I have spent plenty of nights working with large refractors, Newtonians, equatorial mounts, cooled cameras, filter wheels, focusers, guiding systems and enough cables to make a telephone company proud. I enjoy that equipment and I am certainly not getting rid of it.

But I also understand why someone might look at all of that and say, ’There has to be an easier way.’

The S50 Pro is very much about that easier way.

The Seestar S50 Pro Is Here, and We’ve Been Busy Testing It

We did not want our September issue to be a rewritten product announcement. There are plenty of places to find a specification sheet.

We wanted to know how the S50 Pro behaves in the backyard.

We used it in normal Alt Az operation. We worked with equatorial mode. We experimented with 60 second exposures. We looked at how the improved tracking behaves and what the additional aperture actually means when you start collecting real data.

We compared it with the S30 Pro because that is going to be one of the first questions people ask. Twenty millimeters does not sound like much until you remember that aperture does not increase in a straight line when you are talking about light gathering area. The jump from 30 mm to 50 mm is more meaningful than the numbers initially suggest.

But bigger is not automatically better for everybody.

The S30 Pro is smaller and easier to travel with, and its wider field can be useful for large targets. The S50 Pro gives you more reach and more light gathering ability. Which one makes sense depends on what you want to photograph and how you plan to use it.

That is the kind of comparison we wanted to make.

We Had Questions for Sam Wen

One of the things I am most pleased about in this issue is our conversation with ZWO founder and CEO Sam Wen.

I did not want to spend the interview asking questions that amounted to, ’Tell us how great your new telescope is.’

We already know ZWO likes its telescope.

I wanted to understand the engineering decisions.

Why did ZWO settle on this particular optical design? Why use the IMX585 again? Why was active sensor cooling left out? What changed in the drive system? How important is equatorial operation becoming to Seestar? How does ZWO view the growing overlap between a smart telescope and a traditional astrophotography system?

We also talked about where smart telescopes might go from here.

That may be one of the more interesting parts of the conversation because I do not think the S50 Pro should be viewed as some final destination. Smart telescope technology is moving quickly. Sensors will improve. Processing will improve. Mechanical systems will improve. Software will get smarter.

The question is not whether these instruments will become more capable.

The question is how quickly.

There Is More Here Than One Review

The September issue goes much deeper than our main S50 Pro review.

We walk through setting the telescope up and getting started. We dig into the Seestar App and the features that make the whole system work. We look at the two camera design and why having both a telephoto and wide angle view changes how you can use the telescope.

We spend time with equatorial mode because that is where the S50 Pro begins getting especially interesting for the more experienced astrophotographer. Moving beyond short Alt Az exposures and into 60 second integrations changes what you can reasonably ask from a telescope this small.

We also look at remote operation and Telescope Network, along with the growing idea that a small smart telescope does not necessarily have to be sitting ten feet away from you to be useful.

There are actual astrophotos in the issue, practical observations, technical explanations and opinions from several people who have spent time with the telescope.

Not everyone values the same things, and I think that is important.

Should You Buy One?

I know this is the question many people want answered, but I am not going to spoil the entire issue here.

What I will say is that the S50 Pro has earned my respect.

It is not replacing my dedicated astrophotography equipment. That equipment can still go much deeper and gives me control that an integrated telescope simply cannot provide.

But that is not really the point.

There are evenings when I want to spend time tuning equipment, adjusting guiding, choosing filters and working through a serious imaging project.

There are other evenings when I want to put a telescope outside and start photographing something.

The S50 Pro is very good at that second kind of evening.

And sometimes that is exactly what I want.

The September Special Issue

If you have been waiting for the S50 Pro, trying to decide between it and the S30 Pro, wondering whether equatorial mode really matters, or simply curious about how close smart telescopes are getting to dedicated astrophotography systems, this issue is for you.

We have the specifications, but we also have the experience behind them. We tested it, compared it, photographed with it, talked with people using it and asked ZWO some of the questions we wanted answered ourselves.

There are things we like. There are things we would change. There are compromises, because every telescope ever made has compromises.

Most importantly, we tried to answer the questions that come after the specification sheet.

What is it actually like to use?

What can it really do?

Who is it for?

And should you buy one?

The September 2026 special issue of ScopeTrader is our attempt to answer all of that without pretending the S50 Pro is something it is not.

It is a small, highly integrated 50 mm astrophotography system that makes taking pictures of the night sky remarkably easy.

And after spending a lot of time with one, I think that alone makes it worth paying attention to.

Read the S50 Pro special issue here

Buy the S50 Pro on discount