Guide
Where your Seestar or Dwarf 3 saves its FITS files
The picture in your telescope app is a JPG. To process the image yourself, or with Stelora, you need the FITS file: the stacked data before anything was stretched. It is on the telescope, not in your phone’s photos. This is where to find it.
Seestar S30 and S50
The Seestar keeps everything on its own storage, in a folder called MyWorks. Every
target gets a folder of its own, named after the target. In it, next to the JPG, is the stacked
image as a FITS file. Its name starts with Stacked_ (on older app versions DSO_Stacked_) and ends in .fit.
If Save Each Frame is on in the app’s advanced settings, the Seestar also keeps
every single exposure, the raw subs. They go in a second folder with _sub at the
end of its name, for example M81_sub, as files named like Light_M81_10.0s_IRCUT_….fit.
There are three ways to get the files off the telescope.
1. From the Seestar app
Open the album, then the target’s folder. Tap the select icon at the top right, tick the images you want and tap download. The app asks for a format: JPG, FIT or JPG+FIT. Pick FIT or JPG+FIT. The JPG alone is not enough for processing.
This is the quickest way if you want to upload from your phone. Where the file lands on the phone, and the exact menu names, can differ between app versions and phones.
2. With the USB cable
Connect the Seestar to a computer with its USB-C cable. It shows up as a drive called Seestar: in File Explorer on Windows, in the Finder sidebar on a Mac. Open MyWorks, then the folder for your target, and copy the Stacked_….fit file.
This is also the easiest way to copy a large set of raw subs.
3. Over your home Wi-Fi
In the Seestar app, open the telescope’s settings, then Wi-Fi settings, and turn on Station Mode. Join your home network. Tap the ! next to the network to see the Seestar’s IP address.
- Windows: type
\\and the address into the File Explorer address bar, for example\\192.168.1.50. If Windows asks for a user name and password, your Windows settings probably block guest access to network drives. - Mac: in the Finder, press Command-K, enter
smb://and the address, and connect as Guest.
The Seestar’s storage appears as EMMC Images. MyWorks is inside it, laid
out exactly as over USB.
Dwarf 3
The Dwarf app downloads only the JPG to your phone. It is an 8-bit image that has already been stretched, so it is not the file you want. The FITS files come off over USB.
Connect the Dwarf 3 to a computer with a USB cable (USB-A to USB-C or USB-C to USB-C). Windows
and macOS both see it as a USB drive. Every imaging session has its own folder, named like DWARF_RAW_<target>_EXP_…_GAIN_…_<time>. It holds the raw frames, and at
the bottom of the folder the stacked results: a 16-bit PNG, which is already stretched, and the
stacked 16-bit FITS, whose name starts with stacked-16_. The FITS is the one to
keep.
Names can differ between firmware versions. If yours look different, DWARFLAB’s help page “Get to know the files stored in DWARF 3” has the current layout.
Which file to upload to Stelora
- Seestar: the
Stacked_….fitfile. Or, if you kept them, all the raw subs from the_subfolder at once, and Stelora stacks them first. Raw subs cost more credits than a stacked file, and you see the cost before anything is uploaded. - Dwarf 3: the
stacked-16_….fitsfile. One Dwarf 3 stacked file has been through the pipeline so far, so treat it as tested on one file. Dwarf 3 raw subs have not been tested. - Not the JPG or the PNG. Both have already been stretched by the telescope, and the faint signal processing needs is gone from them.
What happens to the file next: How to process Seestar FITS files, and the whole Stelora pipeline in How it works.