ISS coming up

[dark knight]

I saw it twice tonight,, I actually saw the ISS, can't believe it, even the wife said wow....

[jgs001]

Excellent stuff DK. Both the ISS and Flares make great party tricks, keep an eye on HA for predictions and at the right moment, point them out ... You might want to have a compass handy for the flare though.

I got the tracking running, but for some reason, I was a few degrees behind and couldn't catch up so didn't get an image on the sensor... Maybe next time.

[themos]

Good bye Heavens Above, hello Calsky! I think the charts are more accurate.

[dark knight]

John what do I need if it is at all possible to track the ISS with my synscan eq5. I have eqmod installed, is there an add on?

[jgs001]

DK, I'll post up a new thread about it, when I get it working, some setup stuff I need to iron out... But there's a yahoo group that provides a satellite tracking software. This is designed to talk to an LX200... but .... with the right additional components you can make it talk via eqmod to ASCOM.

Have a look at this

The mount tracked the ISS last night, but was a little behind the entire way... I suspect my goto alignment wasn't accurate enough...

[dark knight]

Thanks John, I'm really quite intrigued and would welcome the challenge of trying to image the ISS. It's certainly not easy as I learn't last night.

[Leegsi]

Another 2 passes tonight first one at mag -2.4 @ 22.00 and second one at mag -0.8 @ 23.34

[dark knight]

Yep, I'll be out there again tonight. Just trying to get eqmod up an running..

[phillc]

Another two passes tonight 22.23 @ -2 and the second 23.59 @ 0.4.

I am going to try calsky after themos post.

phillc

[arad85]

I am going to try calsky after themos post.

phillc

Hmm.. I think they are about as good as each other:

21 May -2.0 22:23:05 10 W 22:25:56 48 SSW 22:27:55 17 SE

Descending Orbit. Earth revolutions since launch: 60180.3

Appears 22h21m02s 1.3mag az:283.0° WNW horizon

Culmination 22h25m55s -4.1mag az:201.8° SSW h:48.3°

distance: 465.4km height above Earth: 354.5km elevation of sun: -10°

Disappears 22h28m00s -2.7mag az:130.6° SE h:16.3°

The charts (at least for me) seem equivalent (although the calsky one is larger...)

[Vega]

Well, my Southern sky was clear. Used Regulus to focus the webcam and 3x! barlow. A real pain keeping it centered at such magnification with a 10" Dob. A wonderful clear patch to the West but ISS quickly climbed in to a long finger of cloud stretching all the way to the East grrr. Im kind of glad as when I pressed the capture button, I got an error message with the philips software.. its never done that before so will need to look at that tonight. Still, forecast is good for the weekend :-)

Matt

[themos]

I'll have to do a long exposure and submit it to astrometry. Then we'll see which website got closer to the actual path.