is it a bird is it a plane?

[Pete Presland]

this flew pass Jupiter on Sunday night! any advice on settings for capturing a decent ISS image would be gratefully recieved, mainly focus and exposure it is just so bright.

on the other capture i managed it is very over exposed. still happy to capture it for the first time!

the usual set up C9.25/ASI1200MM

[ejwwest]

What I do to to get a focus is to use a Bhatinov mask and focus on a star first. On exposure the main problem is the dynamic range: parts are very bright and other parts very faint. With my Canon 40D I found ISO 1600 and 1/1000s seemed to get good results but with my 70D go for about 1/2000s and 2000ISO (the scope is f/10). The centre is still overexposed but get reasonable exposure on the solar panels and peripheral parts of the station. If I try tonight's pass I may try bracketing exposures at (say) 1/2000s, 1/3000s and 1/4000s (I probably won't get more than 3 shots in the pass) and see which works best. 

The fact is it is 250 miles away at best, moving fast and there's lots of turbulent air in between so there's a limit to what can be obtained. My experience is that a high ISO is more tolerable to obtain a short exposure. However, for something to aspire to, Thierry Legault has some stunning images (eg: http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/STS-133.html ). His equipment is both better AND he has set it up perfectly (eg I think the collimation of my EdgeHD 925 is probably what I need to fix next).

[Space Cowboy]

Well done Pete! Its hard to set the right exposure when you can't take your eye off the finderscope and the darn thing only appears on screen for a millisecond at a time lol. I set focus on Jupiter and set the exposure so Jup was too dark but hoping it would work for the brighter ISS and it nearly worked.   Raising gamma seems to be the key according to Martin Lewis's excellent tutorial : http://www.skyinspector.co.uk/Imaging-the-ISS%282449273%29.htm