Space Station From My Back Yard

One of the many great things about amateur astronomy is the countless number of things one can do. From simply lying on your back and gazing at the stars to measuring the flux from a cataclysmic variable star. My main interest is comets (for now), but I will often do something completely different. Especially after several nights of frustration in other projects.

I recently got the bug to try and photograph the International Space Station with my modest equipment. (After several nights of frustration in another project!!! :/)

The image above is the result after only my 3rd attempt. The first try gave me nothing but streaks of light across a few frames. The 2nd was better with a lot of frames showing something very over-exposed. This attempt was, to me, a complete success!

This may, and often does, seem like nothing at all to many people. You can't really see much detail. Some say, "Why is it so blurry?" Sure, it's no Astronomy Picture Of the Day, and it may not impress a single soul. But the satisfaction that this gives me is indescribable. Even a blurry, faint, unimpressive picture like this took more planning, study and patience than most people would ever believe. And seeing these images come up on my screen, knowing that these were taken FROM MY BACK YARD, is just so incredible. Now I can go back to my previous project, confident in my eventual success.

- How I did it -

Contrary to what I wrote above, this was fairly easy. The space station is now very bright and easy to find if you know where to look. The camera was a simple web cam, but with an adapter to mate it to the eyepiece holder of my telescope. Those can even be made easily with an old film canister. Probably the hardest part, aside from setting the camera's controls correctly, was following the space station as it passed over. I just looked through the finder scope and tried my best to keep it centered on the cross hairs. Of over 1600 frames, only 58 had the ISS in it! But that was enough to process with Registax to create the final image.

Daytime Astronomy

Great trick: find where an iridium flare will be, make sure you are outside with your partner or friend at the right moment, and 'make it appear'. Say 'watch this', point and listen to the gasp. I did this once. Fun.

Ok, that wasn't during the day. But I suppose it could be done. How do I know?

Back in my earlier days of astronomy, obsessed as I was, I would show my friends things that they didn't expect. Venus is easily spotted when it's at a large elongation (far from the sun as seen from Earth) during the day. Most people just won't believe what they are seeing. Yes, a planet in broad daylight.

But wait, there's more. Sirius. I often find it before sunset to start aligning my telescope. You can find Sirius during the day too. I've even seen Betelgeuse before sunset. You'll need at least setting circles to do this though.

You can, though, see Jupiter during the day fairly easily. But just like Venus and Sirius, you have to know exactly where to look. The first time I saw Jupiter in broad daylight it looked like a balloon. As it probably will today when YOU look at it! I'm making this easy. Ok, I'm not, the alignment is.

Go outside with a pair of binoculars. Find the moon and scan just one degree down or south. That's not a balloon, it's Jupiter.

Comet 6P/d'Arrest

This periodic comet was discovered in Pisces by Heinrich Ludwig d'Arrest (Leipzig, Germany) on 1851 June 28. It has an orbital period of 6.51 years, and is in the Jupiter family of comets.

It had been one of the targets of the CONTOUR spacecraft, which NASA lost contact with after a the firing of it's solid rocket engine.

Comet 144P/Kushida

Here is another reprocessed image. Imaging details are on the image. You can always click it to make it bigger.

Yoshio Kushida discovered this comet on January 8, 1994. He used Technical Pan 6415 patrol film shot with a 0.10-m (4 inch) f/4.0 telescope. A 4 inch telescope!

It has an orbital period of 7.366 years. The closest it ever gets to the sun is about half way between the Earth and Mars. It's furthest point is a bit beyond Jupiter. It reached Perihelion (closest to the Sun) in late January.

Comet C/2006 W3 (Christensen)

I had this image up on my other site and have since reprocessed it. Much better.

This comet was discovered on November 18, 2006 by E. J. Christensen with the Catalina Sky Survey. At the time of this image, it was about 3.7 AU from the sun; beyond the orbit of Mars. It will be closest to the sun, at perihelion, in summer 2009, when it will be about 3.3 AU from the Sun. Not much closer.

After that it will head south and out of the solar system, never to return.
I'll surely be taking more images it it approaches perihelion.

Off Topic: Phishing

Not everyone is aware of this, but they should be.

We all get 'phishing' emails on a regular basis. At least I do; they're easy to spot. Often it will be from "paypal" or "XYZ Bank" or whoever, asking for you to 'click here to verify...", etc.
From now on, when you get one of those, forward it to the company being phished for. For example: If it's a Paypal scam, forward the entire email to spoof@paypal.com. Same goes with banks, etc. Spoof@xyzbank.com. They appreciate it and every email helps.

My Other Sites

For S&G's, links to my other sites, soon to be consolidated:

www.dently.com   SOLD

www.freewebs.com/dently2/

www.twitter.com/Rick_Hollar

https://www.facebook.com/rick.hollar1