ISS solar transit

[jnelson]

While not strictly solar images, uploaded are images of a solar transit of the ISS I was able to capture on 6/28/20 using my Celestron 5SE, ZWO 120MC camera, and Astrozap Baader solar filter. Despite advanced planning it was still a last minute (literally) scramble to isolate the image on the portion of the solar disc the pass was predicted to occur but thanks to Calsky, luck, & prayer, in no particular order, it worked! I attached both a composite of the 7 image frames and the compressed zip file of the raw video of the live pass but don’t blink or you’ll miss the 1 sec pass. I used Firecapture solar settings with blue filter, gain 16, exp 1 ms, and gamma 44 which kept the histogram around 70%. Set the frame rate at 30 FPS which gave me 7 decent images in my FOV. Processed the images with PIPP and sharpened with Registax wavelets. Tried to create a composite using GIMP but couldn’t or just lost patience so I cheated and used a photo processing phone app. My apologies to the purests but I’m new at this.

Have to say it was exciting to see “Bob & Doug” (SpaceX crew) fly by at 17,500 mph from over 250 miles away!

SunISS062820_103604.ser_F2145-2160 (5).zip

(31.35 MiB) Downloaded 127 times

[Lady Fraktor]

A nice catch

[jnelson]

Thanks...Still not sure that the link works but this one might if you see the actual pass.

[Gordon]

Congratulations Jim on having your image selected as todays TSS APOD.

app.php/article/6-30-2020-tss-astrophot ... of-the-day

[jnelson]

Thanks again...it was a fun challenge esp for a newbie.

[Bigzmey]

Cool capture!

[yobbo89]

Wow, how did you determine the location of the pass with such a thight fov, congrats on the image and the apod btw.

[Makuser]

Hello Jim. A nice set of ISS images during the solar transit. This is excellent work Jim, and congratulations on winning the the TSS APOD Award today.

[TheButcher]

Very Nice Jim and Congrats on the APOD!

[jnelson]

Thanks for the kind words. With regard to the tight FOV, Calsky provides not only predicted pass locations but also shows on a simulated sky where on the solar disc the pass will occur. With the recent solar pass it was fairly central so I focused on the quadrant where the pass was exiting. That being said, blind luck played an equally important role.

[Juno16]

Great image! Cool software (Calsky). Whatever processing you use worked well!

Congratulations on the apod!

[Thefatkitty]

That is really cool (and fast!); congrats on the APOD too

All the best,

[helicon]

Congrats on winning the APOD Jim! Really cool grab.