That was close!

[Scooot]

The last couple of nights I've been looking at Sky safari to check when the ISS is passing over and what it's passing close to, so tonight I thought I'd have a go at imaging with it my 16". I could see that at 12.02 it was passing within a degree of epsilon Hercules. So I put the scope on my Equatorial Platform (first time I'd tried it with this scope) and pointed it at the star. I spent a long time fiddling around trying to position the scope so the ISS would pass through the centre of my FOV and then set the platform tracking. At about 5 to midnight I carefully removed the eyepiece so as not to jog the the scope and inserted the canon. Checked in the finder that it was roughly in the same place and then watched the satellite get closer on the iPad screen. I kept looking up in an attempt to find it visually. I suddenly spotted it, so rushed to look through the finder. It quickly appeared in the finder's FOV so I pressed the remote shutter release and fired off a load of shots. It was all over very quickly but I realised it had passed through my finder just below the cross hairs.

Blast I'd missed it! Half a dozen shots of blackness. Then it dawned on me I'd forgotten to focus the camera, so in a way I'm glad I missed it, I'm not sure what would have been more annoying, nothing or an out of focus shot because of my senility. Anyway it was good fun and the plan nearly worked.

[RWB]

As the man says better luck next time  !!!     

             Robin

[DRT]

Bad luck, Richard.

Are you sure you remembered to remove the lens cap?

[andrew65]

Lol unlucky

[Davey-T]

Sounds spookily like my expierience the last two nights Richard, lined up, and focused on a star it was supposed to pass by and fired of in high speed continous as it went through the finder and zilch, using 10"SCT and 2X Powermate to try and capture some detail so very small FOV.

Dave

[David Smith]

Sounds like the sort of thing I might do, forgetting to focus the camera!

Next time