ISS, First Attempt

[tomato]

Here is a first go at trying to image the ISS, a collaborative effort between myself and @Tomatobro. Set up is an Altair 102mm F7 APO with an ASI315 colour camera on a NEQ6. This is a set up and take down rig and despite giving ourselves a couple of hrs leadtime last night, glitches with the software meant the ISS sailed overhead on the first pass while we were still trying to sync the mount...

We used the excellent SkyTrack software, but didn't optimise the lead/lag settings very well so the ISS would swing into the FOV then just as quickly zip out of it.

Here is the best 50% of 57 frames captured that actually contained the ISS. I guess you can just about make out it is the ISS(?) but clearly a long way to go. We just need to get the subject over more pixels, get the frame rate up, get the exposure right, and have it stay in the FOV long enough to capture a reasonable number of decent quality frames, to name just a few.

[happy-kat]

It makes for a very different challenge from DSO, sounds hard.

[maw lod qan]

My first, I was happy to make out the basic shape.

Doesn't give you much time to fiddle with adjustments as it passes!

Lately, I haven't been having good direct passes.

Keep at it!

[Kon]

Good first effort Steve. My first few attempts looked very similar from last year when I started with ISS. You have a lot more complex setup to manage but once you tweak it you should get some amazing captures with mount tracking. Seeing was awful last night from the heatwave and I deleted my capture as it was not worth processing. 

46 minutes ago, tomato said:

get the exposure right,

From my experience with the asi120mc-s and asi462mc with ISS, this time of the year I use Arcturus or Jupiter to get my exposure and gain right. Their apparent brightness magnitude is very similar to ISS. I aim for an exposure of 0.5ms so you can avoid streaking and gain to have a histogram of 40%. You may want to adjust by 10-30 units less than Jupiter or Arcturus since ISS is 1 magnitude brighter.

Finally, I started with a success rate of 10% of ISS in my capture using full sensor and I am up at ~90% with a ROI of 640x480.

[tomato]

Thanks for some really helpful advice. It was tee shirt and shorts weather last night but as a consequence I collected some rather irritating insect bites. The perils of Astrophotography.

1 hour ago, happy-kat said:

It makes for a very different challenge from DSO, sounds hard.

 

50 minutes ago, maw lod qan said:

My first, I was happy to make out the basic shape.

Doesn't give you much time to fiddle with adjustments as it passes!

Lately, I haven't been having good direct passes.

Keep at it!

Guys you are spot on. A totally different hands on experience to DSO imaging, where you lazily collect minute long subs and choose to refocus or not along the way, while all the time the subject stays rock steady in the FOV. With the ISS, its more like doing the scene from Apollo 13 when they had to perform the manually guided mid-course correction burn. 😄