Spacecraft
The following images of the ISS were taken using a Philips ToUCam Pro webcam at the Cassegrain focus of my Celestron Ultima 9.25 telescope without any additional amplification. All are single selected image frames extracted from a single AVI file per pass using AVI2BMP. An unsharp mask operation was carried out using PaintShop Pro. No image stacking was done. The ISS was tracked completely by HAND!! No automatic tracking was used. The 14th December image shows STS108 (Endeavour) docked to the ISS. The 16th December image just shows the ISS as STS108 had undocked ready for its return to Earth. In both images Individual frames from an animation program by Philip Masding are shown to indicate the ISS spatial orientation.
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The following images of the Space Shuttle Discovey were taken at the Cassegrain focus of my Celestron Ultima 9.25 telescope without any additional amplification. Both are single selected image frames extracted from a single AVI file using AVI2BMP. An unsharp mask operation was carried out using PaintShop Pro. No image stacking was done. The Shuttle was tracked completely by HAND!! No automatic tracking was used. Of the 50+ Megabyte AVI files acquired during the pass, only 6 individual frames included the Shuttle, and of these the best 2 are shown here. The image was acquired about 15 minutes after the Shuttle was launched from Kenney Space Centre. Also visible in the sky close to the Shuttle was its jettisoned external fuel tank, but I didn't manage to get an image of it. About 5 minutes after the Shuttle and tank passed over the UK, the ISS made a pass (no images unfortunately due to operator problems!) The shuttle spent several days docked to the ISS and again no images :-( A larger version of this composite can be viewed by clicking on the small one here.
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The following images of the ISS were taken at the Cassegrain focus of my Celestron Ultima 9.25 telescope without any additional amplification. All are single selected image frames extracted from a single AVI file per pass using AVI2BMP. An unsharp mask operation was carried out using PaintShop Pro. No image stacking was done. The ISS was tracked completely by HAND!! No automatic tracking was used. Of each of the 50 Megabyte AVI files acquired during each ISS pass, only about 20 individual frames included the ISS, and of these the best 5 from each pass are shown here. An animation is shown made from the images taken from the June 8th pass. A 2 foot long wooden stick was attached to the telescope tube using duct tape to aid in manually following the ISS (hi-tech manual tracking!!).
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