Mark - ISS

[JohnP]

Mark - If you get anything like this of ISS I will be mega impressed.... pretty amazing I would say.

John

http://spaceweather.com/swpod2008/18may08/ewers_uncompressed.AVI?PHPSESSID=8vlc3659e6sjal54g9aie70ro1

[MarkS]

Stunning!!

To create a video like that he must be tracking the ISS almost perfectly.  I wonder how he's doing it:
What sort of mount?
What hardware/software combination?
What sort of camera (he may not be using a video)?

Actually I do have an idea up my sleeve to create a video from lots of still frames.  A DSLR is great for getting ISS images because the sensor is very large - it allows for a large margin of targetting error.  So my next idea is to leave the DSLR in continuous auto-fire mode and leave both hands free for swinging the scope.

[Rick]

Once upon a time there was a project called sattrack which produced a software package to drive antenae to follow satellites for radio amateurs. It was accurate enough at predicting and tracking that it fell foul of post-911 security...

[JohnP]

Mark - I know that Mac was playing with some ISS/ Satellite tracking s/w at one of the DSC's on his LX - maybe he can post a link...?

I love the way the ISS rotaes & then gets smaller as it transits the sky. The resolution is almost good enough that if a astronaut had been outside on a service mission you could have probably made him out.....!

John

[Mac]

Aye that i was, and i still have the software, all you need to do is to update the tle data wich is downloadable from loads of places,

I'll zip it all down some time tomorrow and post a link to the file.

[MarkS]

Cheers Mac - I've picked it up.

[MarkS]

Here's my very fuzzy attempt tonight (28 May at 10:40pm) - again this was moving the scope by hand.  Nikon D70 on the C11 at F10 with a rubber band to hold the shutter button down to get continuous firing.  But I lost the ISS once it was directly overhead because I couldn't easily see though the finderscope.  Only 30 frames of 160 contained the ISS - these I registered using IRIS. 



For some reason I couldn't upload this to my previews and works in progress area of the gallery.

[Rick]

For some reason I couldn't upload this to my previews and works in progress area of the gallery.

Any specific error messages?

[MarkS]

It appears to upload successfully - I received the message:
   Successful Uploads
   1 uploads were successful.

But when I clicked 'Continue' to add the files to albums, a broken picture symbol appeared alongside the message:
   Please place the files in albums at this time. You may also enter relevant information about each file now.

So I selected the Album: Mark Shelley's Previews and hit continue.  It replied
   The previous file could not be placed.
   You have successfully placed all the files.

When I go to My Gallery, the file is not there

[Rick]

Hmmm... Only thing in the error log is "/usr/bin/convert no such file or directory". I've seen that before somewhere. I'll burrow.

Nope. That's not the problem. It seems, for some reason, to be having trouble making a thumbnail. I suspect PowWeb have an old version of ImageMagick installed, or somesuch...

I'll see what I can sort...

[Fay]

Looks good Mark. I now know how difficult it is to do. There are a couple of really clear frames there. Will you be able to get a good still from those?

[Rick]

Ok. I think I sorted something. Problem seems to be that the version of ImageMagick that PowWeb let us use is a bit old, and it had trouble creating the thumbnail. Well, it's possible the problem was elsewhere, but that seems most likely. I had no trouble uploading it to my local test version of the gallery, and it created a thumbnail just fine. Getting the locally-created thumbnail into the live gallery on PowWeb took a little more effort, but it's now done. Check your previews album and let me know...

[MarkS]

Thanks Rick.

[MarkS]

Will you be able to get a good still from those?

I've added the best 2 frames together and scaled by 150%.  I'm reasonably pleased with the result but the solar panels don't show up very well because of the angle of the sun.

[Fay]

Not bad at all Mark. At least you know all the settings etc now. I will be trying out settings, positions etc in the garden this weekend as soon as cloud permits.