ISS, Mercury transit imaging

[SAW]

Hi,

Those of you that image the ISS passing the moon, sun etc do you use a dslr or dedicated CMOS camera ? Do you capture an avi or single shots with a dslr ? What software do you use for capture and for final processing to show the multiple images of the ISS passing. I currently use Fire Capture for my lunar, solar and planetary so would prefer to stick with that. I need to practice ready for the Mercury transit in November 🙂 

[MarsG76]

FireCapture is good for capturing the ISS transits, and a Fast fps CCD with a fast shutter speed is preferable. You need to capture video to improve your chances, attempting single shots will most likely result in a missed shot.

 

[Freddie]

They are two completely different things. The ISS passes across in seconds, the Mercury transit takes hours. As you say you want to practice for the Mercury transit, imaging the ISS is not relevant you just need to do a standard image of the sun and Mercury will be a very slow moving black dot so no special imaging is required.

[Nigella Bryant]

I was just going to post the same comments, lol. Yeah, Mercury transit starts at around 12.30pm and ends after sunset from the UK. Slowly across the sun from our perspective.  From the UK in November, I'd be more worried about cloud cover.

[SAW]

Just now, Nigella Bryant said:

I was just going to post the same comments, lol. Yeah, Mercury transit starts at around 12.30pm and ends after sunset from the UK. Slowly across the sun from our perspective.  From the UK in November, I'd be more worried about cloud cover.

I should be I Fuerteventura for it.

[Nigella Bryant]

1 minute ago, SAW said:

I should be I Fuerteventura for it.

I'm thinking the Canary Island's or the Gambia, lol.

[dyfiastro]

This i something I have only just started to attempt.
I recently shot my first ISS Solar transit. We will not talk about the scope at present as it was somewhat of a mishmash put together as I dont have a mobile setup until this week.
As far as imaging I shot mine using a fuji XT2 using the built in 4k video.  The total transit time was something like 1.4 seconds so no time to fiddle, I just set the image in the right place to allow for drift and started the camera recording about 30s before It was supposed to pass.

Using PIPP I then exported each frame as a TIFF and aligned the frames. The frames with the ISS in then got imported into photoshop and layered over each other.
This is result of the first attempt using this setup

 

As far as the mercury transit, I intend shooting this using a dslr and scope on a decent tracking mount (not required).
I will set the camera to just take an image every X amount of minutes apart over the space of the transit and then layer them together in the same way.