During this past week I made an effort to track and photograph the International Space Station. First, on the night of June 5th, I waited for it with my binoculars at the scheduled time for my location. It did appear in my sky at the appointed time, going from NNW to E. It was bright and of course moved quickly. The binoculars did not reveal any additional details that I could not already see with my eyes alone (in other words, nothing).
Now trusting the Interweb’s timekeeping for the ISS and having a general idea of where to look for it relative to coordinates, two nights later I set up my camera on tripod to take what pictures I could. Because the ISS is so fast, I had to leave my alt-azimuth tripod knobs loose. This was not too big a deal, as I was able to typically get three to four pictures with my IR remote before the station moved out of view.
In reading NASA’s recommended camera setup for photographing the ISS, I immediately knew my long 300mm lens was about half their suggestion. They essentially say you need a nice long telegraphic lens. Still, I was undeterred. Of the images I took in those brief three minutes, the above I consider the best. This is a highly magnified section of the original, taken at f/8, 1/1000 seconds, and ISO 3200.
On Sunday night yesterday, I attempted more pictures during the ISS’s even longer four-minute flyby. But all of these were either blurry or at a bad angle, as all I got were blobs.
To see something really interesting about the ISS, I recommend checking out Jim R’s cool capture of the ISS transiting the Sun.
