Wesley's Tool-Box

About two hours ago, National Geographic Channel finished the world's first ever live broadcast from space, at ISS, called "Live From Space". To commemorate this event, I took out my camera and shot the ISS making a pass in the sky about 3 hours before the broadcast.

Interesting thing about the photos this time is that ISS was making a slanted pass, so the angle of view changed noticeably in the 2-minute time span. The solar panels were initially facing almost directly, but it was facing sideways towards the end.

Device: Canon SX50 HS
Settings: 1200mm (3x enlarged) - ISO 80 - 1/320s - f/6.5
Filters: None
Time: 2014-03-15 05:43 - 05:44 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea

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

There was another bright pass of International Space Station over the sky this evening. I set up my Canon SX50 HS camera on a nearby park and tried my best to take photos of them.

As always, photographing a tiny object moving at 1 arc degree per second at 50x zoom fully manually isn't really going to work out very well. Even if I somehow catch it at the edge of the frame, it'll exit it in about 1.6 seconds. It only took about 3 minutes for the station to go across the sky and I've only managed to get four shots of it, two of which I'm showing here. They're crops magnified by 2x.

Compared to my first attempt with the same camera, the shot on the left do show the solar panels on the station more distinctly. As the ISS streaked from west to east, its orientation as visible from the ground changed, as is evident between the two photos. It seems that it would be best to try photographing it as soon as it started becoming visible, as the shape looks more recognizable.

Photo 1(Left): 1200mm - ISO 200 - 1/400s (-3.1 mag.)
Photo 2(Right): 1200mm - ISO 200 - 1/200s (-3.9 mag.)
Camera: Canon SX50 HS
Location: Suwon, Korea