STS 127 SHUTTLE VISIBLE OVER IRELAND 19 MINUTES AFTER LIFTOF

Two images - one of shuttle and one of tank.
taken with a Meade LPI downloading in FITS (no avi).
Exposure 0.0057s.

Both images cropped are of same original reslution, same brightness scaling and same colour process. No tricks for enhancement etc.

Its hard to rule out effects from smearing etc (taken by manually guiding an 8" Dobsonian).
Shuttle first.

Mark

Now tank

Mark

Interesting shots.
Were they from the same frame and then cropped
or individual?
I've found trying to capture images like this
extremely difficult and it's very hard to get the focus
and exposure just right.

Looking at Heavens Above,
We have only a few more days of visible passes left.

Frank

The images are from two separate frames - the FOV of my LPI/Scope was too small to capture both objects together.
I did crop each object from each frame as the images of the objects were small in the captured frames.

I didn't really expect to capture anything - set it up with the view that if I did it would be a bonus.

You're right about focus and exposure. I was fortunate in that Arcturus presented it self shortly before fly-over (only star visible to me at time) and I prefocused using a Bahtinov mask. Exposure was too high and shuttle is washed out. Tank is dimmer than I would have expected though.

Tracking manually with a Dob was challenging. I just kept pointing cross hairs of 8x50 guide scope to the nearest of the two objects (which tended to alternate during tracking). Probability, at any given time, of either object being in FOV of chip was low and if they were the probability of trailing was high. If I were doing it again I'd do an AVI - I didn't on this occassion because the tool I use for AVI has given me problems before with exposure changing mid-session.

All in all I took about 400 FITs frames (camera rolling shortly prior to fly-over) and only six had anything at all.

Mark

I think you did well under those conditions to catch anything at all.
Manual tracking as you say is tough.
I would have loved to have tried to catch an image
of the docked craft again but my scope is out of action at the mo
and the club 10'' is just to cumbersome to try with.
The ETX 125 was the perfect little scope for trying this manually.