ISS and a new workflow.

[Kon]

There was a break in clouds this afternoon and with ISS over UK at 1803, I managed a couple of hundred shots. I changed my processing from the other night by preprocessing in PIPP and stacked the best orientations in AutoStakkert. Prime focus with a Nikon D3200 and 8" Dob, iso 3200, 1/4000s. Seeing was not as good as the other night but nice details are coming through.

[MKHACHFE]

Excellent work mate. Can I ask how you took the shots while tracking? Did you just sent the camera on continuous shooting?

Im going to go for my second iss attempt tonight hopefully and I'm debating between using my Eos DSLR or my asi120mm

 

Cheers

[Kon]

24 minutes ago, MKHACHFE said:

Excellent work mate. Can I ask how you took the shots while tracking? Did you just sent the camera on continuous shooting?

Im going to go for my second iss attempt tonight hopefully and I'm debating between using my Eos DSLR or my asi120mm

 

Cheers

Thanks. I was tracking looking down the finderscope (moving the Dob with one hand) and the other hand pressing the shutter; imagine a bit of contortionist. I had the camera on burst mode but the limitation becomes writing the files on the memory card so you need to be a bit tactical when to really go for it. I aim when it is around 50-60 degrees W. Unfortunately, when it is right overhead I lose tracking with the Dob but I picked it up quickly again as it moved towards E. My issue is getting a higher mag (in my setup i tried a 2x barlow but I cannot get it to focus). Your asi might be a better option but you will really need to have the finderscope and EP aligned perfectly since your sensor is much smaller than the DSLR; at least you can shoot movie and extract the best frames. If you go down the DSLR route, I would suggest the 1/4000s exposures; the iso depends on your camera.

Looking forward to see your images if the clouds clear tonight.

[MKHACHFE]

Thanks for the reply and information.

I did manage to get a similar image to you last year using my ASI and XT8. I'll post it here if that's ok just for comparisons sake. Its not as good as your but I literally captured it in only 2 frames out of about 4000. 

I was happy I got anything at all frankly. I'm hoping to retry soon and am debating whether to stick with the ASI or try my DSLR. Seeing your image has given me confidence the DSLR is worth trying. Thanks again and once again, excellent work mate.

 

Cheers

 

[maw lod qan]

Excellent images of a difficult target.

 

[Kon]

6 hours ago, MKHACHFE said:

Thanks for the reply and information.

I did manage to get a similar image to you last year using my ASI and XT8. I'll post it here if that's ok just for comparisons sake. Its not as good as your but I literally captured it in only 2 frames out of about 4000. 

I was happy I got anything at all frankly. I'm hoping to retry soon and am debating whether to stick with the ASI or try my DSLR. Seeing your image has given me confidence the DSLR is worth trying. Thanks again and once again, excellent work mate.

 

Cheers

 

That looks great, for a single frame. I noticed the next few passes are not great in terms of height but worth practicing different setups. I think your ASI will give you better results. How are you tracking? 2 out of 4000 is pretty low.

[MKHACHFE]

16 hours ago, Kon said:

That looks great, for a single frame. I noticed the next few passes are not great in terms of height but worth practicing different setups. I think your ASI will give you better results. How are you tracking? 2 out of 4000 is pretty low.

I make sure my right angled finder is perfectly aligned with the eyepiece view on my XT8, then just start recording on sharpcap and manually track looking through the RA finder. Putting the scope ahead of the ISS and stopping moving the scope so the ISS moves through the frame.

Only problem is that my XT8 suffers from very very bad sticky movement. I've tried fixing I with some soap and grease on the  base, it helped, but clearly not enough. I'm planning on fixing this properly.

That was the issue, everything else was planned and prepared properly an hour before, but the sticky motion of my dobsonian ruined everything.

That's why I was so surprised to even get two frames out of it. Still, it's all a learning curve and good fun, even when I don't get exactly what I planned.

Oh, I forgot to add that I focused and adjusted the exposure and gain settings using Jupiter which was in the sky at the time 

Cheers

[Pete Presland]

Very well captured