Tracking the ISS, an eye on the Moon, Jupiter's pimple & a bit of Mars

[TwoPi]

Hi folks.

With ardbeg74 and his neighbours having kindly secured some clear skies in the South East last night, I thought I'd get the scope out and make the most of it.

For some time I've been intrigued by reports of people tracking the ISS in their scopes and being able to make out the solar panels and various orbital segments. I've been particularly intrigued by people using a GOTO scope like mine, such as Dude_with_the_tube in this report. I've also recently downloaded SatelliteTracker and so I thought I'd see if I could get it to automatically track the ISS.

However, after a brief test with another satellite half an hour before ISS was due to appear I realised that it wasn't going to work... in theory I believe my SynScan handset understands NexStar GPS commands (and indeed when I tried to track a satellite it did move the scope towards the right part of the sky) but it seems that the SynScan doesn't correctly report its current position to SatelliteTracker and so after a few seconds the scope stops moving and an error comes up on the laptop telling me that it doesn't know where the scope is pointing. (As an aside I'd be interested if anyone else has seen this problem and has found a solution.)

So I then moved to plan B which was to move the scope towards where I expected the ISS to appear and select slew rate 6. I actually found SatelliteTracker's real time view of a satellite's alt & az quite useful in getting the scope to the right place and get ISS visible in my finder scope, but in retrospect I could have got the same info from Sky Safari on my phone or even looking at HeavensAbove or CalSky to get some co-ordinates beforehand. So no laptop next time...

Once I saw the ISS in the finder scope it was pretty easy to get it into my 16mm eyepiece's field of view and keep it there, giving me a 75x magnified view. I must say, the image completely blew me away - I could easily make out the 4 solar panels as four golden coloured rectangles and a series of bluey-white shapes clustered between two sets of panels that were the various orbital segments.

I tracked it for a minute or two and then found as it approached the zenith I needed to increase the slew rate to 7 to keep up. I lost it at the zenith as I couldn't continue without quickly rotating the mount through 180° and by then I'd had a stunning view for a couple of mins so just watched the ISS disappear with just the naked eye.

I'd really encourage anyone who hasn't done this to give it a go - absolutely worth the effort! I would imagine it's probably even easier with a manual dob

After that triumph I turned my attention to the Moon. The last few times I've looked at the Moon it has been showing other people various features so I've tended to stick to the 4 or 5 features that I can easily find/talk about and just repeatedly observe those. With my recent Sky Safari purchase I wanted to spend some time on my own just using the high-res map in the app to identify features as I moseyed around the surface.

I ended up spending time in the area around the Apennine Mountains at the edge of Mare Imbrium and really enjoyed some superb views using my Delos and Nagler eyepieces between 150x and about 266x magnification.

One curious feature I noticed was in the Apollo 15 landing area near Mons Hadley that strongly resembled an eye! I think it was Bela Crater and the nearby Rima Hadley lunar rille - I wondered if anyone else had looked in this area and spotted it?

I decided to finish the evening by taking a quick peek at Mars & Jupiter. Mars was a complete washout compared with Friday night's view - it varied between a shimmering peach-coloured featureless blob to looking a little like a tennis ball (i.e. two grey lines in the pattern you get on a tennis ball).

There were a couple of very brief moments when I could just about identify Syrtis Major and Acidalia Planitia. In the end I gave up and turned my attention briefly to Jupiter and just managed to catch Callisto emerging from the planet's disc - it genuinely looked like Jupiter had a pimple on its face.

At this point the wind was picking up, Jupiter started to move behind a tree, I realised the Moon was also behind a (different) tree and my wife came into the kitchen and flooded the back garden with light. I took this as a sign that the effects of ardbeg74's sacrifice had worn off so it was time to pack it in and go indoors for a cuppa.

Apologies for the rambling, but all in all I was quite chuffed.

[Orange Haze]

Good ramblings Gav and thanks for sharing. I've become a bit obsessed with the ISS over the past couple of nights after accidentally stumbling over it on Monday. I did manage to just about follow it with my manual Dob, although I think I need a bit more practice. Wasn't able to make out the panels but I was only at x43 and having enough trouble concentrating on keeping it in fov. Next time.....

But seeing it and thinking about what it really is, is a really awe inspiring moment.

[hippie]

I will have to have a go at Tracking the ISS with my dob  , I have been watching it every night this week with just the bino's so far!  .

[Astro Imp]

Great report Gav, a really good read.

I was just about to start another thread but think I'll just append my musings here.

Yesterday had been a glorious day so set the scope up after dinner waiting for Jupiter to appear. As soon as the gas giant showed I started observing at 150x. The view wasn't great as by this time there was quite a lot of high cloud and I could only make out the two prominent equatorial belts. I kept looking and it was obvious that I was looking through cloud as the moons were quite faint.

After some time I moved round to Mars, a planet I have tended to neglect as the view has always been poor. For the first time I manage to see a dark smudge along the western edge, Syrtis Major?, looking like an indistinct Y-shape. This was using the same eyepiece as I had been using on Jupiter. I then upped the mag to 214x and the view deteriorated so went back to 150x. After awhile the dreaded clouds covered most of the sky so took my gear in.

Knowing that the ISS was making a pass just after 9.50 I went out with the bins and followed about a third of it's passage before it was swallowed by the clouds.

Interesting to read that you managed to follow the ISS with your scope, that is the next thing on my to do list but I think I might have problems with a manual EQ mount. I'll report my findings when I have given it a go.

[TwoPi]

Good to hear others are giving it a go - good luck folks

As a follow up to my original post, I discovered that changing the telescope protocol setting in SatelliteTracker from NexStarGPS Continuous Tracking to Celestron CGE Continuous Tracking was better (the scope went to the right place and started tracking at the right point), but still failed after a short while with the same error message "Cannot get Celestron CGE Current Position!".

Not tried it with ISS yet but will persevere and see if I can get it to work by fiddling with the settings a little more. Will report back if I succeed.

Have fun everyone!

[asset189]

Ha ha, got the 8" manual dob out tonight for the 9pm pass and managed to get it in the finder then kept it in the eyepiece for about 30 - 45 secs. Proud of myself as i managed to resolve the shape , this hobby always manages to excite . Because of the speed of it I found it difficult to track with the Alt-az motion of the dob. I used a zoom eyepiece and this did make locating the iss in motion a bit easier. Thanks to the OP for the idea.

[Stu]

Nice report Gav :-)

I've managed to track ISS on a manual AltAz mount before, if you can pick it up when it is low down then it is slower and easier to find. I had to give up as it passed overhead, too awkward and fast but got it again afterwards.

I've started using Skywire to control my mount and SkySafari does show satellites so in theory I could try getting it to track it. Might give it a go next time.

Stu

[spaceboy]

I have recently got the bug for chasing the ISS across the sky. I have an 80mm f/6 frak on a tripod which with an 82° EP allows me a reasonably large FOV to easily locate and manually track the ISS at x58.