ISS coming up

[themos]

22:50 tonight, go out now!

[dark knight]

North to South????

[dark knight]

Are you sure??

Search period start: 00:00 Monday, 11 May, 2009

Search period end: 00:00 Thursday, 21 May, 2009

Observer's location: Unspecified, 0.0000°N, 0.0000°E

Local time zone: Central European Summer Time (UTC + 2:00)

Orbit: 345 x 357 km, 51.6° (Epoch May 10)

Click on the date to get a star chart and other pass details.

Date Mag Starts Max. altitude Ends

Time Alt. Az. Time Alt. Az. Time Alt. Az.

11 May -0.8 07:30:12 10 NNW 07:33:02 43 NE 07:35:53 10 SE

13 May -1.5 06:46:48 10 NNW 06:49:42 53 NE 06:52:36 10 SE

14 May -0.7 07:14:14 14 W 07:15:33 18 SW 07:17:42 10 S

[aderyn]

Thanks, Themos - just caught it!

[themos]

That was a good one! I was following another fainter sat for a while and then the ISS turned up, way brighter than Arcturus. A bit past Bootes, I could see another two sats converging on its track, all in the 5 degree field of the (image-stabilised by wooden inertial frame) 10x50 binoculars.

dark knight, you need to set your "Observer's location".

[aderyn]

Should be even brighter for the next few nights - but the forecast is terrible....

[dark knight]

Hehehehe I'll remember that for the next time dohhh. I would never have worked that out due to my eagerness, so thanks.

[Helen]

I just saw it too!! (by chance) and then another sat and then a shooting star. I'm glad I braved the wind

Now if only my QHY8 would talk to my PC

Helen

[Leegsi]

Nice bright one tonight too

[maroon bells]

I caught that, it was very bright...completely unmistakeable.

[jgs001]

Didn't catch it, although I'd planned to... The clouds were holding out signs saying "nothing to see here"...

Dark Night, the ISS always passes west to east.

[dark knight]

Thanks John, no wonder I missed it, for some reason I looked North to South dohhh..

[maroon bells]

Will it be due again tonight? I may try to catch it in my 20x100.

[jgs001]

You're welcome DK, North/South is Iridiums... amongst others

MB There's currently 2 passes per night, at reasonable times, although there is the occasional third pass that bit later. Good luck with those bins.

[Kai]

Heavens Above shows a pass tonight at 21.32 lasting 5 mins almost overhead and another at 23.07 but at 43 degrees

Both are bright ones though

[themos]

I'm going to lay an ambush around Alkaid with an 84x56 arcminute fov in the 450D. I estimate apparent speed at 69 arcmins per second. I hope I can get 3.5 fps shooting rate so I'm in with a chance. Apparently, High ISO Noise reduction needs to be off. I got astronomiser's external power cable today so that will feature too. I guess I should use RAW capture (no JPEG) and the laptop EOS Utility to fire off the exposures.

[jgs001]

Actually, if you want to sustain 3.5 fps, then use JPG... That will allow you about 35 exposures at 3.5fps, whereas in RAW it's 6 before the buffer is full, and the frame rate will drop to a little under 1 fps. High ISO NR will cause the frame rate to drop to about 2 fps with pauses for the first 6 in RAW.

[themos]

JPG it is then! I hope I have time to experiment beforehand. I am not sure if the EOS Utility intervalometer will support burst mode, anybody know for sure?

[Vega]

...Go hardcore and get ur webcam on it. Thats what I plan to do! muuwhahahaha.

Warning, if you live in Somerset, you may hear distant excho's of a man swearing while the ISS is flying over LOL.

Matt

[dark knight]

I never knew that John, I often see a constant moving object going north to South, not streaking across like a meteor. I always wondered what they were and presumed it could be the ISS. I guess it's more likely to be a satellite maybe?

[jgs001]

...Go hardcore and get ur webcam on it. Thats what I plan to do! muuwhahahaha.

Warning, if you live in Somerset, you may hear distant excho's of a man swearing while the ISS is flying over LOL.

Matt

Matt, I'm planning the same thing with the Skymax, my SPC900 and hopefully, if I can get away with it a barlow... I must be mad.... There might be a lot of screaming going on

DK, HA and a number of others will enable you to determine what you're looking it, there's a lot of stuff up there floating around in orbit...

[MartinB]

I was looking through some binos and then decided I would scan the galaxy region between Leo and Virgo with my 12" skyliner when I was dazzled by the ISS. I didn't even know it was coming. Managed to track it with the Dob and a 30mm UWA Moonfish, it was all very bright but the arms of the ISS were easy to make out.

[dark knight]

Many thanks John, I hate not being able to identify what I'm looking at. Next time I will note the time and look at HA.

[jgs001]

Nice one Martin. DK check on the satellite predictions for the approx time, they are listed down to mag 4.5

[themos]

Alkaid ambush failed due to cloud. Next pass I tried waiting by Omicron of Virgo but the HA chart was off and the ISS passed too far away from it ( I also realized I couldn't reach focus and I had to use the Barlow so my FOV was much smaller). Next time, eh?