ISS occults Jupiter in broad daylight (May 29, 2010)

Dear friends ... and Kieran,

A few days ago I captured the ISS transiting the sun (as per www.perseus.gr/Astro-Sat-Trans-2010-05-25.htm ) and a few hours ago I caught the ISS again in broad daylight but this time on a flyby of Jupiter which was more an occultation of the gas giant.

Enjoy: www.perseus.gr/Astro-Sat-ISS-2010-05-29.htm .... focusing was VERY difficult against a low contrast brightly-lit sky. Sol did help but there were no sunspots to finetune focusing and I got very lucky in getting as close to perfect focus as possible.

Anthony.

Amazing Capture Anthony..... well done

As always - I'm impressed.

Mark

Wow!

That really is impressive!

Peter

Nice work Anthony.

One question though: your choice of camera.
How come you used a DSLR rather than a high-frame rate camera (DMK/webcam etc) for this project?

Thanks everyone!

Michael, the problem with webcams is the very small chip and which makes the field of view (ex. at 2400 mm focal length) excrutiating small, thus easily allowing one to miss the passing ISS.

As much I would love to use a webcam for a nice sequence against the solar or lunar disk, the risk involved does not justify the potential reward. As an aside, I have both a USB2 and FireWire DMK which I could have used for these transits and at 60 fps!

Another (lesser) problem is the fact the webcams are generally monochrome.

Anthony.