Posts tagged 'ISS Solar Transit'

Observing Report 18th August 2019 (a better ISS Solar Transit)

Posted by on August 18th 2019 in My vids, Observing Reports, Video (YouTube, Vimeo etc.)
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I thought that my recent unscheduled stay in hospital would mean missing this morning's ISS Solar Transit, but I was let out yesterday after only 10 days.

There were hardly any gaps in the cloud cover, but I got set up anyway. Luckily, a small gap appeared at just the right time and for just long enough to get the job done. The recently-acquired ZWO ASI174MC made light work of capturing full-frame (1936 x 1216 px) raw .avi data at 160 FPS.

Here's a clip, slowed to 4 FPS. It's best viewed in full-screen at 1080p.

 

And here's a cropped stack of the ISS. I think that it's a reasonable first effort:

 

Observing Report 29th August 2018 (I see a little silhouetto of an ISS…)

Posted by on August 29th 2018 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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I've been waiting to have a pop at this for quite some time - solar transits of the International Space Station (ISS) visible from my obsy are as rare as rocking-horse shit.

For the past two days the weather had been forecast to be cloudy until two hours after the transit but I got set up regardless, hoping for a gap in the clouds.

It didn't exactly clear, but it thinned sufficiently at just the right time for me to give it a shot.

Visibility was poor due to the thin cloud, and the camera was dropping frames for the first time ever, but at least I caught some footage. Viewed from here the full transit lasted about one second (the ISS moves at about about 17,500 miles per hour) and my FOV covered about two thirds of the transit path, I was shooting at 30fps so in theory I should have captured about 20 useful frames.

Here's a composite pic of all of the frames featuring the ISS, run your cursor over it to see a sharpened version:

 

ISS Solar Transit (~ 09:41 UTC, 29/08/2018).
DMK mono camera on C80ED-R, Baader Solar Film filter.

 

I'm chuffed with that for a first attempt.