ISS over the UK, 26th May 2016

[Tim]

Three passes of the ISS over the UK tonight. Here's a pic I got of the first pass. UK astronaut Tim Peake is on board at the moment, and keeps taking fabulous shots from up there, of down here. I thought I'd repay the favour by taking a shot of up there, from down here 

 

[Mak the Night]

I'm pretty sure I saw the ISS travel past the Moon the night after the Mars Opposition looking through my 130mm reflector at around 193x. It was kind of squarish and angular like that moving very quickly.

[Ibbo!]

nice shot Tim

Just waved to him on his 01-10 pass - quite a bit brighter and a lot higher than the early pass

[johnfosteruk]

Lovely capture Tim.

[Yamez]

Great image! I saw two of the pass overs but ive packed my telescope and came in for the night, too tired to stay out for the third. I tracked it through my scope manually using a 25mm EP you can only just work out the shape or it's just me thinking i can see it

[Debo]

That's a super shot Tim.  What telescope and camera did you use ?

[Davey-T]

Excellent ISS Tim, some equipment details would be good.

Dave

[mikeskor]

Really wonderful capture.

[Tim]

Excuse the copy and pasted text above from facebook

The main bit of equipment that enables these shots is my Gm1000 mount, which will track the ISS, or indeed anything in the sky.

Onto that I have a 6" achromat at the moment, and 2 X Powermate, with a DMK618 mono camera.   As the mount tracks the ISS, it gives you a chance to play with the exposure and gain settings on the camera, to get a few frames nicely exposed.

As the ISS goes over, not only does the brightness intensify and alter all the time, it also appears to rotate somewhat, it is a different shape at the start of the exposure to the end.

I took a few thousand frames in the avi file, this is a stack of a couple of hundred.

What surprises me, is that the seeing makes a big difference, the ISS at this scale is just as jumpy as the moon on a bad night.

If I get 5 minutes any time soon I will upload the avi file to youtube, to demonstrate that.

Cheers

Tim

[Davey-T]

1 hour ago, Tim said:

Excuse the copy and pasted text above from facebook

The main bit of equipment that enables these shots is my Gm1000 mount, which will track the ISS, or indeed anything in the sky.

Onto that I have a 6" achromat at the moment, and 2 X Powermate, with a DMK618 mono camera.   As the mount tracks the ISS, it gives you a chance to play with the exposure and gain settings on the camera, to get a few frames nicely exposed.

As the ISS goes over, not only does the brightness intensify and alter all the time, it also appears to rotate somewhat, it is a different shape at the start of the exposure to the end.

I took a few thousand frames in the avi file, this is a stack of a couple of hundred.

What surprises me, is that the seeing makes a big difference, the ISS at this scale is just as jumpy as the moon on a bad night.

If I get 5 minutes any time soon I will upload the avi file to youtube, to demonstrate that.

Cheers

Tim

Thanks for the update Tim.

I have a GM1000HPS arriving next week, also got the Tecnosky 152mm that I use for solar and an assortment of cameras so will give it a go.

Lots of nice long ISS passes at his time of year, my previous attempts have been with the Meade LX200R which claims to be able to track the ISS but fails miserably 

Dave

[laudropb]

Great capture.

[Tim]

5 hours ago, Davey-T said:

Thanks for the update Tim.

I have a GM1000HPS arriving next week, also got the Tecnosky 152mm that I use for solar and an assortment of cameras so will give it a go.

Lots of nice long ISS passes at his time of year, my previous attempts have been with the Meade LX200R which claims to be able to track the ISS but fails miserably 

Dave

Oh, you will love the 10 Micron

Uploading the latest TLE data is dead easy, I keep meaning to have a go at another satellite, the handset tells you which passes will be doable in the very near future.

I've done the ISS before with my SCT, and would like to again, but I have a loan scope mounted at the moment. Still to catch one of the high overhead passes with it.