Wesley's Tool-Box

Last Saturday was a pretty good day to see the stars. The smog was lifted and the clouds were barely present during the night. I already made a post about seeing Venus, but I took a look at Jupiter as well. Earth is moving closer to the planet and it'll be at its closest in a month (January 5, 2014), so the view would be nice and big for the next couple of months.

In this composite photo, all four Galilean satellites are present, and the Great Red Spot is visible as a wrinkle in the right end of the lower dark band. 50x magnification on Canon SX50 HS is really at its limit here.

Settings: Canon SX50 HS - 1200mm - f/6.5
Filters: Baader M&S applied
Time: 2013-12-07 22:25 - 22:32 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea
Photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8

Jupiter: ISO 80 - 1/50s, 19 photos stacked
Satellites: ISO 1600 - 1/5s, 42 photos stacked

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

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