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ISS and Atlantis crossing the Sun

carldr

By carldr
in Imaging - Solar

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carldr

carldr

Posted
Posted

Hi guys,

I captured the ISS and Atlantis crossing the Sun shortly after midday today, from my parent's back garden in South Manchester. Attached is the result!

The image is a 1/1250s exposure image at ISO 400, taken with a Canon 500D at prime focus on a Celestron C9.25 with Baader solar film.

The camera was set to continuous shooting, and I started the shooting 5 seconds before ISS/Atlantis were due to cross the Sun and continued for a few seconds after. The crossing time was only 0.6s, so this image is the only one on which they appeared. It has been processed in PhotoShop, sharpening it slightly and colourising it.

I'd got to my parent's a bit late, and had only finished setting up 5 minutes before the crossing, so I didn't really have long to experiment with exposures and other camera settings. I'm pretty happy with the way it has turned out, but if anyone has any constructive criticism, I'm all ears!

Finally, I've had a brief look, but couldn't find anything concrete - Can anyone tell me which of few pixels making up the ISS are Atlantis?

Carl.

post-21491-133877634746_thumb.jpg

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Glen

Glen

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No constructive criticism here im afraid , but, that is pin sharp! You must be happy with that?! ~And a quick set up to boot..:)

There is an online app that shows the orientation of ISS viewed from Earth.. i'll dig around

hint.. what ever direction it was travelling Atlantis should be at the back or stern when docked :)

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Carbon60

Carbon60

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Excellent capture Carl! Last shuttle flight.....a rare transit opportunity well imaged. Once undocked we'll NEVER get the opportunity to take this type of photo again. Quite a thought. Thanks for sharing.

Stu.

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King

King

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That's really good! It gives me a reason to get round to finding a focus solution for my PST/EOS combo (as I don't usually photograph the Sun with that camera).

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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Hi Carl, that really is a cracker of a capture. Very well done indeed.

I have no criticism to offer but just maybe an idea. Don't know how it would work but; do a stack with lots of subs and ignore the transit. That will give you a really solid sun. Then layer the ISS image shown here onto that and discard all but the shuttle.

Anyway it's brilliant and, as above, unique.

Olly

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Glen

Glen

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Hi guys,

Finally, I've had a brief look, but couldn't find anything concrete - Can anyone tell me which of few pixels making up the ISS are Atlantis?

Carl.

Carl I think it's here..

post-21702-13387763541_thumb.jpg

Pin the tail on the donkey game...:)

I believe i've got the angle a bit wrong in Sketchup ~my first go :(.

you can get the model also..In sketchup go to File/3d warehouse/Get models..:)

HTH

P.s I can't seem to locate the program that shows how it looks from a location and time, may be worth asking on the yahoo group.

You could try this but it's no longer updated

http://www.zen32156.zen.co.uk/ISSSim.htm

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carldr

carldr

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Hi guys,

Thanks for your comments, glad you all seem to like it! Special thanks to Glen for pointing out where the Space Shuttle is - I've still not looked it up myself, so I'll give it a go before The Apprentice starts.

Olly, I'll give stacking the Sun a go. However, I had to shoot in jpeg rather than RAW, so I don't know how it would turn out. I think it would be cheating to take a sequence of shots from a different time and then super-impose the ISS, but I still might give that a go for the exercise if nothing else.

26Left, good luck with your transit!

Finally, I tried re-processing the image, and I believe this version is slightly sharper and the colour is a bit richer. Certainly, I prefer it when printed.

post-21491-133877635488_thumb.jpg

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carldr

carldr

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Thanks for the comments guys.

That is amazing! How do you find out the transit times?

I use CalSky.com. Once you have your location set-up, it gives you a big list of events happening in the near future. You can configure the list to include only things you're interested in, but I mainly use it to keep an eye out for ISS transits.

Regards,

Carl.

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Astrokev

Astrokev

Posted
Posted
Hi guys,

The camera was set to continuous shooting, and I started the shooting 5 seconds before ISS/Atlantis were due to cross the Sun and continued for a few seconds after. The crossing time was only 0.6s, so this image is the only one on which they appeared. It has been processed in PhotoShop, sharpening it slightly and colourising it.

Carl.

Hi Carl

Nice capture. How many frames per second will the 500D manage on continuous shooting? Even with the short transit time, I would have thought you should be able to get more than a single frame showing ISS. May be worth checking if you can increase the frame rate.

Kevin

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carldr

carldr

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Hi Kevin,

Nice capture. How many frames per second will the 500D manage on continuous shooting? Even with the short transit time, I would have thought you should be able to get more than a single frame showing ISS. May be worth checking if you can increase the frame rate.

The camera works at 3.4fps on continuous shooting. I think the reason I only got one image with the ISS on it was that the ISS crossed the Sun top-to-bottom as looking through the camera. You'll note the image has the top and bottom edges cut off - I suspect if I'd had a bit more time and thought about it, and oriented the long edge of the sensor along the path of the ISS, I'd have captured at least another shot with the ISS close to the bottom edge.

Regards,

Carl.

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Astrokev

Astrokev

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Hi Carl,

3.4 doesn't leave much room for manoeuvre I guess. Your suggestion of aligning the axis might help, as you suggest. Another thing to consider is getting as close to the centreline as possible. The most I've managed is 4 frames showing the ISS when Endeavour was docked a few months back. I was close to the centreline for this shot, but also had the benefit of shooting at 5 FPS. -

http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-widefield-special-events-comets/143532-iss-endeavour-solar-transit-24th-may.html

Sadly, not as detailed as your image, but I was limited by only using a telephoto lens on my DSLR. Next step for me is to hitch my DSLR to a scope!

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