After dousing myself with mosquito repellent I went outside tonight to set up for a dark twilight high lunar transit by the ISS. I set up to watch it from my backyard at 81X through my Celestron 8 inch telescope. I placed my Nikon Coolpix 4500 digital camera onto my Celestron 5 inch telescope 40 mm eyepiece to try to get it digitally. I set the camera on "movie mode" and did catch the pass at 15 frames per second! The moon more than fills the frame a bit. I will soon be trying to get that movie to a URL where people can see it. I also taped it at 25X using my Sony digital video (DV) camera. I learned a lesson in that on the tape I chose an exposure appropriate for the moon which made the ISS barely visible. It showed up well at the higher magnification using the digital camera on the telescope however. What I saw with my eyes was absolutely beautiful! The moment the ISS came into view it was already on the bright limb of the moon. The station itself was a tiny white dot somewhat brighter than the moon's surface. What I really liked was how when the contrast brightened as it crossed the terminator the station appeared to grow in size. It appeared to suddenly swell many times in size and turned into a brilliant light little light. It was gorgeous! Thanks Kevin and Tom for the warning! Clear skies, Tom Iowa USA + + + ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from SeeSat-L, send a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org List archived at http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jun 08 2003 - 23:37:25 EDT