Just 2 days after a great pass on Saturday night, the ISS made another flyover at an even higher altitude (86 degrees). Interestingly, this made it easier to track, since the dob required very little rotating as I followed it up and down. I managed to navigate Dobson’s hole without threat of upset this time. I also chose to manually fire the shutter instead of using the IR remote release. This gave me better control over timing, and out of 51 exposures, 38 contained the ISS. A few of the images contained some nice detail on the radiators–the grid pattern actually showed! The strip below shows 3 of the better frames. The top frame is on approach, and the bottom two are on egress.
Photo series of ISS Flyover
I made an attempt to label the structures visible in one of the images as shown below. If anybody is better at ID’ing than me, I’m interested to know any labels that are incorrect.
Labeled ISS Image
Move mouse over image to view labels.
Because I was able to collect so many images, I was also able to create a short animated gif showing the space station on approach and escape: ISS Animation (540 K)
Another set of superb ISS captures Jeremy, and the animation is brilliant! I especially love your annotated image — because I’m a tech geek. If you have a spare moment or two I’d really recommend heading over to Astronominsk. The collection of photographic work that Yuri Goryachko and his colleagues have produced is stunning. There’s a beautiful ISS photograph in there to!
Ewan
Thanks again, Ewan. It’s interesting to see it rotate and change perspective as it moves off. I’m glad you pointed out Astronominsk–there’s some great photography there. The ISS images are incredible, and the lunar and planetary photos are definitely not to be missed.