ISS passing Canopus and Achernar, 21Dec09

[StephenM]

Hi all,

The clouds cleared in time for me to catch a mag -3 ISS pass at about 8:15 last night. I did a series of 5 x 10 sec exposures with my 18-50mm lens at 18mm, f/4.0 and 800iso (plus 5 darks), which were stacked using DSS and then adjusted using PS7. Here's the result. The LMC is visible above the tree, as is the SMC (faintly) and 47 tuc towards the lower right. This was the first time that we have had clear skies for a bright ISS pass for quite a while, so it was good to get out and capture it.

Thanks for looking

Cheers,
Stephen

[Kevnool]

Good shot Stephen yep can see the SMC easily.
The IIS looked liked a good pass.

Cheers Kev.

[Quark]

Nice shot Stephen,

Good to some some more wide field work from you.

Regards
Trevor

[hotspur]

Nice pic Stephen.

I have been trying for many months to do this,but the weather and work

comitments have prevented me to do so,i have bought a special ball head thing that i got an engineer to modify so it goes on scope etc,

so it camera can sit on scope fo wide field shoots,but its never been used yet.

I also got this camera lens thats F2.8,but the widest it goes is 70mm

would that be any good for this type of photography Stephen?

I have a 17-85,thats not too bad.

ok, Chris

[StephenM]

Thanks Kev, Trevor and Chris.



I'd go with the 17-85 at 17mm Chris. I've done a couple of satellite images with my 70-300 set on 70, and you'll find that the ISS typically will traverse the entire field of view in only about 10-15 seconds. That lens will be useful if you want to catch it passing a small constellation like Crux though.

Cheers,
Stephen