Wesley's Tool-Box

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

Like it was back in June for Saturn,it would be a good time to get photos of Jupiter for the next couple of months. Earth is getting closer to it, meaning bigger angular diameter (about 41.9" now, and will peak at 46.8" in early January), and it rises high up in the sky during the night, lowering distortion from atmospheric disturbance.

With nature cooperating, I tried various combinations of ISO and shutter speed settings on my Canon SX50 HS to capture distinct cloud bands of Jupiter. Today's sweet spot seemed to be at 1/125s with ISO 80 setting. Too bright or dark, and the bands became hard to tell apart. At the optimal setting, the thickening of the lower band was noticeable, and that's where the Great Red Spot (GRS) was.


And this is a composition of that optimal Jupiter photo over the Galilean satellites I took a few minutes later. The satellites are Ganymede, Europa, Io, and Callisto from left to right. Jovian system was at about 44.8 degrees above horizon and climbing the eastern sky, so it was vertically arranged. The photo was rotated clockwise by 90 degrees to show the system horizontally. Read further for specific settings I used.

2012 was a rare year where I was able to photograph two instances of celestrial bodies blocking the Sun. It's also the year I left this blog without updates, so I skipped on sharing what I caught, at this place. I'm going to rectify this problem with this post.

After I uploaded the composite photo of the partial solar eclipse yesterday, I remembered that I also made an animated GIF version of it. The left one is this. If you click the thumbnail, you'll be able to see the 24 photos in succession.

The right one is the Venus making a transit of the Sun, which is quite rare - the next one will happen in 2117. I was in Madison, Wisconsin at the time, and was able to catch the event as the Sun was setting into the western sky. It was very cloudy that day, but I was able to make do and catch enough photos to make an animated version out of it. Click the thumbnail to see it in full glory.

- Partial solar eclipse
Camera: Canon EOS 450D + Tamron 18-270mm Di II VC PZD
Time: 2012-05-21 06:51 - 08:46 KST (UT+9)
Composition: 24 frames, 5-minute interval
Location: Seoul, Korea

- Transit of Venus
Camera: Canon EOS 450D + Tamron 18-270mm Di II VC PZD
Time: 2012-06-05 18:35 - 20:23 CDT (UT-5)
Composition: 12 frames, 10-minute interval
Location: Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Yesterday, there was a rare "hybrid" (annular/total) solar eclipse that were visible in parts of Africa and Americas. Unfortunately, it was in the middle of the night in Korea, so I couldn't personally see it. Next solar eclipse that I can see without leaving the country would be in 2016.

So I'm looking back at the solar eclipse that I did see and photograph last year on the roof of the company office. The 24 photographs of the Sun, starting from the lower left (because it was rising) were taken at a 5-minute interval and then put into one image. The eclipse started as the Sun rose over the horizon, and finished just before the work hours. Talk about work-friendly celestrial event.

Camera: Canon EOS 450D
Time: 2012-05-21 06:51 - 08:46 KST
Location: Seoul, Korea

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