Three views of the International Space Station (ISS)

[iceman (Mike)]

Hi all

After a long break, interrupted due to changing jobs, new laptops, processing planetary and deep-space images - I finally got around to finish processing the two ISS images captured on the 26th and 28th of December 2007.

They were two spectacular passes, magnitude -2.4, passing about 70° overhead - though I could only capture them for about 40-50 seconds each, because of trees blocking the horizons.

I put my 12" newt on the dob base (not on the EQ mount), and aligned the finderscope with a star. I tracked the ISS manually by peering through the finderscope and moving the tube, trying to keep the fast moving bright dot centered on the crosshairs while my DMK21AU04 (in a 2x barlow) was recording at 60fps. Exposure used was 1/1200s and gain was almost maximum. Out of about 2500 frames captures, less than 100 had the ISS on them, and not all of those were sharp. I need to get a better hit rate!

It was an adrenalin rush, trying to get everything working for such a short period of time. On both occassions I forgot to press record in IC-Capture until about 5 seconds had passed! doh! And at the same time I had my Canon 350D and 17-70mm Sigma lens tracking on my EQ mount, pointed at the sky - and I had to remember to press the shutter remote to start the 2 minute exposure for the widefield view. Unfortunately I didn't have time to focus the lens accurately so the stars are blobby.

After all of that, i'm very pleased with the results though.
Thanks to Ralf Vandebergh for helping me to identify the structures.

The first image is from the 26th December, and the animated gif of the best frames for that session can be seen here:
ISS Animated Gif - 26th December 2007

The first image is from the 28th December, and the animated gif of the best frames for that session can be seen here:
ISS Animated Gif - 28th December 2007

The third image is the widefield view from the 26th.

Thanks for looking, comments welcome.

[davidpretorius]

Originally Posted by iceman

It was an adrenalin rush, trying to get everything working for such a short period of time.

i can remember when i tried this last year with the toucam, i think i forgot to breathe..

these images are getting bloody good mike

[erick (Eric)]

I bet that was an exciting couple of minutes. I remember the rush just trying to grab some short widefield exposures knowing that, if you blinked or sneezed, you lost vital time that couldn't be recovered.

They look like pretty good and detailed shots to me, Mike. I take it that different passes give different orientations? Does it maintain the same orientation relative to the Earth all the time? (Sorry - I could look that up myself).

Now, next is HST??

[duncan]

Hi Mike,
You have done extremely well to get them by manually moving such a big scope. Try as i might my little camera hasn't got fast enough ISO (400 tops) to do anything like this. But my day will come,I just gotta get the other half what she wants first,LOL.
Top work Mike
Cheers,
Duncan

[edwardsdj (Doug)]

Hi Mike,

Awesome ISS images

I quite like the widefield shot too.

I'm so keen to try this myself one day. I'm sure it's really difficult to get the target on the chip of the ToUcam using the finder though. To get 100 frames containing the ISS sounds like a really good result to me.

Have fun,
Doug

[sheeny (Al)]

Good work, Mike! It can all get a bit hectic when the ISS starts it's pass! It just happens and moves so much faster than other astro things...

Al.

[tornado33]

Very nice work there. The 2nd one has heaps of detail I bet it was hard keeping the ISS "still" in the scope and camera.

Theres a very good flyover on the morning of 4th Feb for Newcastle according to http://www.heavens-above.com at 5.25 am AEST
Scott

[RB (Andrew)]

That's so cool Mike.
The stills are great, the second anim is awesome.

Excellent work, as always.

[Ric]

Wondeful images Mike, fascinating with so much detail.

Great captures

[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks for your comments.

Originally Posted by erick

I bet that was an exciting couple of minutes. I remember the rush just trying to grab some short widefield exposures knowing that, if you blinked or sneezed, you lost vital time that couldn't be recovered.

They look like pretty good and detailed shots to me, Mike. I take it that different passes give different orientations? Does it maintain the same orientation relative to the Earth all the time? (Sorry - I could look that up myself).

Now, next is HST??

Good question Eric, I wondered the same thing myself. But looking at other people's images of the ISS, I'm guessing it rotates and rolls around quite a bit, giving different orientations each pass.

I've considered giving the HST a go, but every time I look at the upcoming passes, they're never higher than 10deg above the horizon.

Originally Posted by edwardsdj

Hi Mike,

Awesome ISS images

I quite like the widefield shot too.

I'm so keen to try this myself one day. I'm sure it's really difficult to get the target on the chip of the ToUcam using the finder though. To get 100 frames containing the ISS sounds like a really good result to me.

Have fun,
Doug

It sure is. I've only tried this 4 times - the first time I got an overexposed blob, the second time I got a whole avi of black frames with not a single hit recorded, and the third and fourth times are the results above.
It's essential to get the finderscope as accurately aligned as possible, get the focus spot on, and make a rough guess at the exposure. I usually put the 12" newt on my EQ mount to get focus right (so the star doesn't move) and rough adjustment on the finderscope, then move it to the dob base to align the finderscope again. I've found that looking through the finderscope even on a slightly different angle can mean hitting or missing the ISS in the FOV.

I guess at the exposure, starting at around 1/1200s for a bright overhead pass. I'm guessing it would need to be a bit less for dimmer passes.

Originally Posted by tornado33

Very nice work there. The 2nd one has heaps of detail I bet it was hard keeping the ISS "still" in the scope and camera.

Theres a very good flyover on the morning of 4th Feb for Newcastle according to http://www.heavens-above.com at 5.25 am AEST
Scott

Thanks Scott.
For processing, I go through the avi in virtual dub, deleting the blank or blurry frames. When all that's left is frames with bits of the ISS in them, I save them as bitmaps. I then use ninox/ppmcentre to centre the ISS in the frame and crop the frame to something like 400x400.

I then hand-select the sharpest, best frames and layer (stack) them in photoshop, then save as tiff, take into registax for slight wavelet sharpening.

For the second shot above, I was lucky enough to capture a few frames where the ISS went behind a tree - this reduced the exposure and the overexposed areas (eg: the radiator on the right) came out at about the right exposure. So I processed them independantly, and used a layer mask to combine it with the overexposed one.


I've been waiting for this upcoming pass for a few weeks (last one was clouded out), but it looks like this one will be too along with the venus/jupiter conjunction

Thanks again for your comments.

[leon]

Wow, That is a fantastic image, and so clear, great job Mike.

Leon

[Jules]

Fantastic effort Mike!

Congratulations on the www.spaceweather.com mention!

Julian

[Inmykombi (Geoff)]

Excellent detail on the second lot of images.

Well done again.

I am convinced you only need about an hour or two sleep every night....

Keep it up and keep the images coming.

[acropolite (Phil)]

Very impressive Mike, I can't recall seeing that much detail in terrestrial images before.

[skwinty (Steve)]

Hi Mike
Congrats on your ISS pix making Universe today.
You certainly have set a high standard for us to follow.
Kind Regards
Steve

[Night Owl]

Originally Posted by iceman

Hi all

I put my 12" newt on the dob base (not on the EQ mount), and aligned the finderscope with a star. I tracked the ISS manually by peering through the finderscope and moving the tube, trying to keep the fast moving bright dot centered on the crosshairs while my DMK21AU04 (in a 2x barlow) was recording at 60fps.

It was an adrenalin rush

Awesome work mate. What you have done is like shooting a fly on the wing from the hip, yet you scored a hit.

Your work is an inspiration to me, and, at the risk of using a pun, "something to aim at".

[Lester]

Very good image of the ISS.

Well done Mike.