Wesley's Tool-Box

Yesterday's passing of International Space Station had another interesting characteristic. It came within about 0.65 arc degrees of Jupiter at the closest, and I ended up taking both objects at once in several frames. This crop, reduced to 30%, shows one of such instances. You can see that the station looked both larger and brighter than Jupiter.


As for Jupiter itself, I photographed its system slightly later. Ganymede was pulling out of Jupiter and was barely visible outside of Jupiter's bright disc.

Time: 2013-11-12 06:02 - 06:23 KST
Top: 1200mm (reduced to 30%) - ISO 80 - 1/640s - 06:02
Bottom: 1200mm, stacked using RegiStax 6.1.0.8
- Jupiter: ISO 80 - 1/320s - 06:20, 7 frames
- Satellites: ISO 800 - 1/10s - 06:23, 27 frames
Location: Suwon, Korea

Just a day after successful testing of the iPhone-based tracker, ISS made a nearly direct overhead approach in the sky as seen from my house. This would provide an excellent opportunity to take biggest shots of the station because it would be at the shortest distance from the observer when it's directly overhead.

As the space station rose in the southwestern sky at 6AM, I began tracking it with iPhone 5S and taking shots with SX50 HS. More than 200 shots were taken, and 44 photos deemed of good quality were selected for processing. You can see the animated version of the approach here, as well as the stacked version that bring out the detail of the station at three points of the observation.

This is the first time I could properly see the full spread of ISS in my photos - the solar panels and the main modules of the station in the iconic H shape configuration are clear and large, especially when it was only about 500km away. I'm frankly amazed that a point-and-shoot bridge camera could photograph a satellite this well even under ideal circumstances. We live in amazing times.

Settings: 1200mm (2x enlarged) - ISO 80 - 1/640s
Photos: 13 frames / 9 frames / 8 frames stacked using RegiStax 6.1.0.8
Time: 2013-11-12 06:00 - 06:02 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea

Earlier this month, I devised a way of photographing the fast-moving International Space Station (ISS) with Canon SX50 HS by tracking the station with iPhone 5S. The phone is mounted on top of the camera using a combination of smartphone tripod mount and hot shoe tripod adaptor. In essence, the phone would serve as a more or less "live wide view" unit, while the camera would keep shooting.

I had a good opportunity to test this setup earlier today, as the space station made its pass from the western sky in the early morning. I aligned the iPhone's screen with SX50 HS's by targeting a faraway object, both at maximum zoom. And then I waited for the station to make an appearance. As soon as I was able to spot it on the phone's screen, I started shooting with the camera.

In the end, I was able to shoot 41 consecutive photos of the station in the span of 18 seconds. This proved that the setup worked beautifully - the only limitation was the tripod not being able to position the camera higher than 70 degrees. Stacked image shows the solar panels of the station, as well as the docked Soyuz spacecraft that carried up the Olympic torch for Sochi 2014 games last week.

Settings: 1200mm - ISO 80 - 1/640s
Time: 2013-11-11 06:50:32 - 06:50:50 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea
Photo: Top photo made by stacking bottom 14 photos using RegiStax 6.1.0.8
Animation: Continuous loop of the 41 photos shot

By default, iOS devices like iPhones and iPads use 4-digit passcodes for the lockscreen. You could also use alphanumeric passcodes that are more secure, but they bring up a keyboard on the lockscreen. This is rather cumbersome compared to a keypad.

What's often overlooked is that there is in fact a nice compromise between the two. You could use a long numeric passcode, and it'll give you a keypad just like when you use a 4-digit passcode, as you can see here. You do need to press a button after entering the digits, but that's because it won't let someone guess how long it is.

I think this is even more useful when coupled with the Touch ID in iPhone 5S. You can still use the fingerprint to conveniently unlock most of the time, and you'll feel more safe in that there is less of a chance someone else could bypass that and unlock using a passcode instead. And the "autofill" of the passcode when you press your finger to unlock doesn't reflect how long the passcode is, either. It just shows nine dots all the time. A perpetrator won't be able to guess the length of the passcode by glancing at your screen.

About a week ago, I made attempts to photograph both International Space Station and China's Tiangong-1 space station, as they were to make a pass in the sky within about 30 minutes of each other. While I was able to witness both, I've failed to photograph them - ISS was going to fast for me to track it with my camera, and Tiangong-1 was too dim.

In the preparation for this failed attempt, I took some shots of Venus through the clouds and adjusted the camera and tripod settings. I wasn't aiming for quality, but at least it shows the crescent shape of the Venus somewhat definitely. So it wasn't a complete loss for that day. In the next several months, Venus will look bigger, and the crescent will become slimmer. I'll be making some follow-up observations.

Camera: Canon SX50 HS
Settings: 1200mm (2x TC) - ISO 200 - 1/15s or 1/100s - f/6.5
Time: 2013-10-30 18:00 KST
Location: Seoul, Korea
8 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8