Quote:
Originally Posted by astronobob
Thats Awesome Andrew- very well done, sharp, excellent exposure 
Nailed the focus, how did you manage that ?
I tried years ago with a 12" SCT but never nailed the focus, tho maybe using a Dslr & exposure of 1/4000 was not quick enough - that would be 4ms I believe, & could be the issue ?
Yeah, definately a top rate catch there - wicked ! |
Thanks Bob, it is my best one to date. To get this one image, I captured a 26GB movie with over 22000 frames at 100fps over 4 minutes, then used PIPP to filter the frames that showed
something bright in those frames and then sort them into "quality" order. Of the 900 or so frames that PIPP ended up with, I then went through them manually in AS!3, only selecting those that were not overexposed, blurry or otherwise unsuitable. This left 37 frames, the best of which is shown here
.
Your DSLR should be able to image the ISS, especially at 1/4000 sec (which is 0.25 ms shutter speed btw), but you really need to get lucky, or plan really well. Because my camera could record full frame at 100 fps I just tried to track the ISS as it moved across the sky with the camera on record. I don't know the frame rate of the DSLR but it's probably not 100 fps. I think the best way of doing it is to point the scope ahead of where the ISS is moving to and let it move across the sensor, that way I reduce any blur from my moving the scope. You might be able to do the same thing, and hope that you can get a few frames on target - the DSLR's large sensor would certainly help here.
Focus was pretty easy, I just focused on a bright star (Sirius) and then left it alone.
Here's an animated gif of some of the "other" frames that weren't quite as good as the first one.
Andrew