ISS with no scope

I had my camera set up to try and get a shot of the shuttle
and its tank the other day but the clouds rolled in.
As usual they cleared right after they were gone so I said
I'd leave my gear standing and try catch the an ISS pass.
I decided I'd try and see just how much of its current shape
was visible in a photograph without using a scope.

Turns out it's quite a lot! I used a Canon 350D camera and a 300mm zoom lens on a tripod.
I used various aperture values to be sure as to eliminate motion blur or camera wobble.
The resulting set of shots shows the ISS and even the solar panels quite clearly.
I was amazed to see the cigar like shape even in the viewfinder!
The image reads right to left as the ISS passed over.
Each image is a crop from the full image size and the
inset shot is a stacked image of all 11.





A curiosity none the less but it's amazing to think just how big it is.

Interesting images there Frank.
I also had a go at manually tracking the obsessionator on the ISS and WOW, what a view!! my best go at manual tracking yet, the solar panels were black/brown with a gold hue lattice, the modules were a dazzling white, the entire thing took on the shape of the letter H, and yes it is big, it mustn't be far off the size of Copernicus on the moon as seen through a scope.

I'm having difficulty reconciling that with your images, are you able to figure out its orientation in them?

Was this visual Dave or where you tracking with the webcam in the focusser. If visual, what eyepiece/mag where you using? Might give it a go for the 10.50pm ish June 2nd pass

Hi Keith,
It was purely a visual thing, since I'm never going to be in space this is as close as its going to get to actually seeing it in space, for me this is more exciting then imaging it.

I was using a 26mm T5 nagler, this gives me 96 times magnification with a field of view of about or 51.25 arc minutes. The trick to manually tracking it is to use as low a power eyepiece as possible, also using a telrad is essential for finding the ISS when you loose it, and you will the first few times you do this but you will get better with practice.

Apparently the Argonavis can do satellite tracking, I'm going to experiment with it soon to see what its capable of, if the scope can do the tracking, all the better.

Cool! Can the servocat slew that fast?

It can do up to 6 degrees per second, 0.5 degrees faster then the meade etx, the real issue is how accurate will it be?
When I do a long azimuth slew at low altitudes, I need to sound the fog horn so that no one gets a telescope punch in the face. :lol:
The far end of the scope moves quite fast at that speed.