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Got the ISS image I NEVER thought I would be able to


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Hi! I'm Fran

Not so long ago I took a picture of the ISS I never thought I was going to be able to get with the equipment I have. 

After saving for a long time, I was able to buy my first scope, an OTA Skywatcher 200P. I adapted it to be used in a dobsonian base because it was the cheapest way I had to get it to work.

One night, I thought it might be cool to try to aim and record with my phone an ISS pass overhead. During the first attempt, I messed up the focus extremely bad but you can't  imagine how happy I was to get a white blob in a frame that only I knew was the ISS. 

The following afternoon I tried again. This time the flyby was almost exactly overhead and the night was crystal clear. So I manually tracked the station looking through the finder scope and recording it with my phone at 1080p 60fps. Without much expectations I downloaded the files into my computer to review them.  And was shocked with the results.

The video was processed with PIPP, AutoStakkert and RegiStax. 

1945386768_ISS20200821A.png.f9421d49aa7acea9b979e230c04ca003.png

 

If someone told me the image was taken with a phone and manually tracked with a shitty dobsonian base I would not believe him! I got really lucky that night, but I can not be happier with the results. I believe I got to the edge of what I can accomplish with the equipment that I was able to buy. I'm not sure if ext step up should be a real camera or a mount. Anyway, any of them are too expensive 😬

If you want to see the frames before processing (and some nice shots of the moon that night), I'll leave a link to the video where I show them:

 

Thank you so much for reading it all.

Cheers,

Fran

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Great shot! That's really impressive!!! I've been thinking of having a go of getting the ISS on my Skywatcher 150pl telescope and maybe using the video on my S10e smartphone - how difficult is this? I imagine the ISS is moving at a fair clip compared to the background stars? I've got tracking on my EQ mount but no idea what speed I'd use for the ISS - if you can track it manually with the slow motion controls I'd definitely give it a shot.

I' definitely be interested to see a link to the pre-processing frames. [edit: I'm dumb and didn't spot the video link - the YouTube images are really good!)

Edited by _Rachael_
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Amazing what is possible with simple tech !

I tried to get the ISS crossing the moon with my DSLR mounted on an undriven scope and got it in a couple of frames which I have made into an animated GIF. The whole crossing took just a second or two and the moons was partially behind tree branches so I was pleased to even get it in 2 frames:

 

 

issani300720.gif

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Very nice capture. 

I've tried several attempts, going from just a bright wiggling blob at first to an image where you can start to see solar panels with a bright central section.

But my attempts were single images snapped with an interval timer as I moved my DOB by hand.

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On 08/09/2020 at 05:47, John said:

Amazing what is possible with simple tech !

I tried to get the ISS crossing the moon with my DSLR mounted on an undriven scope and got it in a couple of frames which I have made into an animated GIF. The whole crossing took just a second or two and the moons was partially behind tree branches so I was pleased to even get it in 2 frames:

 

 

issani300720.gif

Nice one! That photograph is way more difficult, you have to be extremely precise! 

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