Video capture of ISS passing close to Mars this morning

[StephenM]

Hi all,

We had the ISS at magnitude 0.4 passing very close to Mars this morning, so I decided to have a go at recording the passage through my scope. I used a 20mm eyepiece (mag 50x) and hand-held my wife's Cybershot compact camera up the the eyepiece. The resulting movie can be found here:

http://s307.photobucket.com/albums/nn311/stephenmudge/?action=view&current=ISSpassingMars15May09.flv (http://s307.photobucket.com/albums/nn311/stephenmudge/?action=view&current=ISSpassingMars15May09.flv)

(I hope this link works - I don't have the latest verson of Flash player at work so can't test it. I also have a 613kb wmv file if required.)

My rough estimate is about 5 minutes of arc separation at closest approach. The ISS was about 900 km away at this time, too far to be able to see solar panels etc.

I also managed a wider-field shot using my tripod-mounted dSLR, which is shown below.

Thanks for looking!

Cheers,
Stephen

[Dennis]

Nice work Stephen - thanks for getting up so early to record this event!

Cheers

Dennis

PS – the link worked just fine.

[StephenM]

Thanks Dennis! Glad you like it.

And thanks for reporting back about the link!

Cheers,
Stephen

[iceman]

haha that's great. nice job!

[hotspur]

Hi Stephen

just viewed your vid,yes it worked well

great effort getting that,what sort of cam corder did you use?

i have just got a new Samsung corder,would like to know of i can use

it for astronomy,i have a bracket,modified to attach to scope

regards Chris:thumbsup:

[desler]

Great work Stephen,


Link works a treat, has that real wow factor!

Darren

[jjjnettie]

It just whizzes past Mars Stephen.!
Nice capture.

[StephenM]

Thanks Mike, Chris, Darren and Jeanette!




Chris, I used a very basic setup here. It was just a Sony compact digital camera that also does movies (as most do these days), hand-held. I'm sure you would be able to get better results with a proper camcorder attached via a bracket!

Cheers,
Stephen

[spacezebra]

Very cool Stephen - great capture

Cheers Petra d.

[StephenM]

Thanks Petra!

Cheers,
Stephen

[seeker372011]

very cool