ISS and Shuttle

[Adrena1in]

First time out in ages last night. Mount not working properly, but as I was intending to shoot the ISS and Shuttle it didn't really matter...I was going to be tracking manually.

At my location it was a good opportunity last night. ISS was rising in the West at 30 degrees elevation, going almost directly overhead, then dropping in the East. Two minutes of visibility.

I set up on the garden, mounted my 1200mm refractor, got the camera ready and focused on a star, made sure to turn burst shooting mode on and mirror lockup off, aimed above my house roof, then waited.

Right on time the ISS appeared over my roof. Without looking through the camera viewfinder itself I just started firing off shots, aiming and moving the scope by hand to track the ISS as best I could. Sometimes I'd aim ahead and hold my shutter release down to fire off 5 or 6 shots, but mostly I'd just track it and shoot ever second or so.

Sorry about the amatuerish composition of this image, but I've just quickly put it together here at work. I might try something better later.

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/3705/iss2233009.png

What surprised me most was that out of around 180 shots, I managed to capture the ISS 25 times. That's a pretty good hit-rate I think. Even better, I captured it with my very first shot! Quite a lot were rubbish, and the ones above aren't great, but at least you can see the shape, especially in the first one.

The change in orientation happened when it passed almost directly overhead, and I reversed the position of the scope as I tracked the ISS back down into the east.

And I wanted to see how big the ISS appeared compared to a planet, so took a quick shot of Saturn to stick it in there.

Comments welcomed.

[Dusty]

Well done, what a great hit rate indeed.
Nice images and final composition too.

:D

[Mike Salway]

Excellent work! What camera did you use?

[Aaagogo]

COOL!!!!

[Bernoulli]

That is so cool! The composition is great. It makes me want to try it myself sometime.

Tell us more about the tracking. Were you looking through the finder scope or what? And by "manual" do you mean pushing it around with your hands?

[Adrena1in]

Thanks guys. I used my 450D to take the shots. ISO 1600 and 1/200th of a second for each image, which I hoped would be about right, and it was.

And yes Bernoulli, I didn't have the mount plugged in or anything...I just loosened the locking bolts and moved it by hand. And I didn't look through my finderscope either...I just looked along the length of the scope tube and aimed it manually as best I could. To be honest I wasn't really expecting to capture the ISS even once, let alone 25 times and with some being good enough to see the shape. Definitely pleased.

What I'd like to be able to do is have a second camera, with the 10mm lens, to take a wide-angle exposure of the entire path of the ISS, and then superimpose my close-up images along the path. I think that might make for an interesting composition. Only have one camera though. Perhaps a cheap second one should be on the shopping list...along with a 16" f/5 SCT to get me a bit closer! ;)

[WildClyde]

Very cool images!

Thanks.