With all the activity in
Stephen’s post, I decided to go for it and I spent a couple of hours planning and setting up. I did the day time polar alignment using my Azimuth and Altitude Protractor jigs, as I figured I wouldn’t have time to polar align before 6:11pm! I slewed to 43° altitude and the very ends of the gum tree branches were swaying into the FOV in the strong SW winds, but when they dropped, the FOV cleared – yay!
With the 400mm F5.6 clamped onto the mount I took some preliminary photos of the Moon in daylight to get a good focus – LiveView on the 40D rocks big time, yeah!
I then had a look at the Heavens Above chart and created a facsimile view in The Sky with a field of view indicator for the 400mm F5.6 and then oriented the 40D accordingly.
After all that, I sat back and waited and was gobsmacked at how bright the HST became as it slowly crawled along the sky to the Moon. I was so mesmerised by the sight, that I almost forgot to press the shutter release on the Canon as the HST passed Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali in Libra. The single exposure was set to 10 secs and I just guessed when to press the shutter release in Canon EOS Utility running on the notebook.
Aesthetically, I like the shot where the HST terminates before it reached the end of the frame, as it makes the photo more dynamic, rather than being cut into 1/3 rds by a white line!
Cheers
Dennis
