ISS & Shuttle tonight - who's up for imaging it!?

OOOOOman that was hard trying to track that with an equatorial mount :roll: is not ease but I got about 1to2 to 3 seconds of it on the screen I am going to get that satellite tracking software.Now how do I stack them images : : :

Carl, you probably won't be able to stack them as they will be different as the point of view changes all the way through the pass. What you're looking for is a good crisp single frame.

Interesting pass tonight - I watched for the ISS on the horizon with an accurate clock counting down the seconds to aparition and lo and behold the ISS suddenly appears (more or less 'pop!') several seconds ahead of schedule and as a very deep red star. For over half a minute it did not appear to move upwards in the sky but sat still (about 1 or 2 degrees above my local horizon) just getting brighter and brighter! Only at (or around) the correct aparition time did it actually start moving up in the sky and get brighter still but steadily less red. I've never observed the effect of atmospheric refraction quite as dramatically as that before!

Phil.

PS - In my 10x50 binos I could clearly see that the ISS was an extended object and not a point source, but I certainly couldn't make out any structure the way the image was bouncing around with my heart beat!

I saw the same effect.
It's also flaring when it gets to the east,
must be the angle of one of the panels.

Carl,
well done on getting a few frames.
(now you know what a hit or miss task it is)
I hope the tracking software works out for you.

Paul,
Nice wide field shot there,
The pass was indeed a little lower than before and
this really did effect the overall size of the pair in the camera.

I got 2 decent frames near zenith and stacked them in Registax.

Get this guys, I'm all ready to go this evening, scope set up and focussed, camera ready to go, file set.

ISS/Atlantis pops up over the house. I quickly acquire it in the finder, this isn't too bad I'm thinking, then it gets a lot harder, bump, i just hit the meridian, so a quick 360 pirouette and I'm back on the case again, eventually I see ISS dim in the finder and know the pass is over. Oh goodie, I thought, I bet I got loads of that!!

Nope :roll:

Guess what idiot forgot to click that nice shiny big 'RECORD' button. :evil: :evil: :evil:

Yeah you gottit in one! Doh!!

The language was unreapeatable!

Done that too Dave,
but the one good thing is that you will only ever do it the once!