Wesley's Tool-Box

Launched in 2006, MetOp-A is the first European operational meteorological satellite, which is in a polar orbit. It currently serves as the backup of the MetOp-B that was launched in 2012. They also exhibit flares, although relatively less frequent and dimmer compared to the Iridium fleet.

This photo is a first for me in many aspects. It's the first time I did a long-exposure capture of a satellite flare. Previous ones were done in burst shots, then later animated and/or composited. It's also the first time that I used SX50 HS to capture a flare. iPhone 5S is better at burst shots, but not long exposure. Finally, this is the first non-Iridium flare that I caught in a photo.

The satellite moved downward in the northern sky, below the bright Polaris visible on the left side of the photo. If you click on the photo for a larger version, you can see most of the constellation Ursa Minor / Little Dipper covering the top part.

Considering the light pollution, this observation suggests that the satellite needs to be at least -1.0 magnitude at maximum, and be more than 30 degrees above horizon to make a noticeable streak in the photo. I guess that explains why I couldn't catch Tiangong-1 space station on photo several months ago.

Device: Canon SX50 HS
Settings: 45mm - ISO 200 - 15s - f/4.0
Filters: None
Time: 2014-04-08 21:26:38 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea
Max Magnitude: -2.2

Last Thursday, Iridium 12 was making a bright, magnitude -6.1 flare in the northern sky just below Polaris, so I took its photos with my iPhone. To eliminate the camera shake in the images, I used Hugin for the first time. It seems to do an excellent job of it.


Device: iPhone 5S
Settings: 30mm - ISO 2000 - 1/15s - f/2.2
Filters: None
Time: 2014-04-03 19:58 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea
240 photos stabilized with Hugin 2013.0.0 and combined with Startrails 2.3

While I have observed the International Space Station (ISS) making a pass in front of the Sun before, it was at a resort far away from home. Yesterday, I had the good fortune of witnessing a pass right at home. My daughter Celine wanted to help out, so I let her set up the equipment and we went to the parking lot to start photographing. We took the photos of the Sun together, and in three of the frames, the ISS was found crossing in front of the Sun. Here is the composite of the three frames set against the stacked 32 frames I shot in 14 seconds while attempting to capture the transit, both in the annotated and full version.

The last frame was really lucky, as it was taken just before ISS got out of the Sun's disk - 0.1 seconds late and we would have ended up taking two frames instead. SX50 HS's regular burst mode takes a photo every 0.43 seconds, so given the transit time of less than a second, this was the best outcome I could expect.

I do wish the fast burst mode, which can take a photo every 0.077 seconds, could take more than 10 photos at once, though. The transit prediction from CalSky is pretty accurate, but local clock error and human reaction delay can creep in. So I would need it to last at least five seconds or so. I should either wait for Canon to make a superzoom camera that can shoot longer bursts, or install an iPhone 5S, which can do 0.1-second burst shots for several minutes, on a telescope. I'm saying this because I missed the Moon - ISS transit on Saturday while using the fast burst mode.


Anyways, here's the animated version of the transit that illustrates the movement quite well. Come to think of it, this sort of pass would be hard to see in person with binoculars - ISS is tiny and moves quite fast, so unless the Sun is magnified really big, it'd be hard to notice.

Device: Canon SX50 HS
Settings: 1200mm - ISO 500 - 1/1250s - f/6.5
Filters: Baader AstroSolar Safety Film
Time: 2014-03-23 08:57 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea
Base photo: 32 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8 (08:57:10 - 08:57:24)
Animation: 5 photos (08:57:16.8 - 08:57.18.5)

My daughter Celine got interested in building a telescope after seeing a couple of real ones in the house. She even made a make-believe one out of a couple of tubes. But to make a working one, one would need at least two lenses - an objective lens and an eyepiece. Those aren't just lying around anywhere in working pairs, so I searched for a simple telescope building kit instead.

And this "HT-Mini v2" was just the thing I wished for. It's cheap, at about US$5.60, while seemingly easy and sturdy enough for a kid to handle. I ordered two, so my two daughters wouldn't fight to have one, and the kits arrived in the mail the next day. Each of them were basically comprised of a pre-cut foam sheet and two lenses.

We opened the package and got to putting one together.

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