ISS passover through 200mm newt.

[blinky (Leigh)]

This is my first attempt to capture the ISS. It was a perfect flight path from NW horizon to SE horizon. ISS tracker app on my phone said it was visible for 6 min total with unobstructed viewing. I took a four minute video at about 18fps at max resolution 1280*960 with the ZWO asi 120 mm. I tracked the iss by hand guiding while looking through the finder scope. Out of the four minute avi, only 400 frames had the iss in it. The original video only had flashes of the iss in it. I was amazed after running it through the program called PIPP at how good a job it did of grabbing those relevent frames.

the picture is one of the better frames with wavelets applied.
the other pic is my setup, not including camera

this has been one of the highlights for me in my short time astronomizing. i highly recommend giving it a go.

below are links to an animated gif and youtube video of the resulting PIPP video.
http://giphy.com/gifs/iss-internatio...toVpoDscDMv7jy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joAPJIc_NSU

hope you enjoy having a look

Leigh

[JA]

Wow - Great catch !!! Thanks for sharing

Best
JA

[DJT (David)]

Great shot. Love the mount and tripod!

[Dennis]

Great work Leigh, with an excellent result.

Cheers

Dennis

[RB (Andrew)]

Leigh, well done !
That's a great result for a first try.

[silv (Annette)]

So cool! Thanks for sharing!

[Atmos (Colin)]

Fantastic job Leigh!

[blinky (Leigh)]

thanks all for the kind responses!

[astronobob (Bob)]

Well, that is a very decent catch Leigh, it is a rather tricky space object to catch at that F/Length.
I have had some success a while back now & know from experience, so, this image of yours is a job well done !!

[glend (Glen)]

Yeah nice mount and tripod! So your running a converted dob, did you need to alter the focal length for imaging?

[blinky (Leigh)]

Originally Posted by glend

Yeah nice mount and tripod! So your running a converted dob, did you need to alter the focal length for imaging?

Yeah it was originally a dob but I didn't change anything regarding focal length. the camera was in prime focus. In fact if I were to try capture the space station again I'd use the dob mount for ease of movement when hand tracking. No need for the meridian flip that way.
The mount was made by my friend Les O'neill and is a great bit of work. the tripod i made.

And thanks bob. i reckon i'll have another go at it and try to improve.

[silv (Annette)]

oh, ISS... at 8.30 pm UTC/GMT a Sojuz capsule launch will bring another 3 humans to the ISS.
watch live here http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Hu...a/Proxima_live