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ISS Solar Transit with NO filter
Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 8:12 pm
by rbenton
I wanted to shoot this ISS transit yesterday, and had everything ready to go. But here in northern California I am surrounded by the many wildfires burning simultaneously, and there is so much smoke/haze in the atmosphere I was able to make a video and this composite photo with no filter at all. Here on this forum you have all seen shots like this before so I didn't think I'd be impressing anyone with mine. But the fact it was made without any filtration, I thought was remarkable.
- ISS Transit comp.jpg (789.28 KiB) Viewed 1568 times
Re: ISS Solar Transit with NO filter
Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2018 7:39 am
by marktownley
That's a great shot Richard! I've not caught an ISS transit yet. You got the region of plage that rotated around the limb a few days ago.
Re: ISS Solar Transit with NO filter
Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2018 7:41 am
by Derek Klepp
Always a pleasure to see these.You are certainly copping some fires over there.
Re: ISS Solar Transit with NO filter
Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2018 10:14 am
by robert
Very interesting shots!
Robert
Re: ISS Solar Transit with NO filter
Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2018 11:33 am
by Montana
Wow!!! getting an ISS is the greatest achievement you can get. I tried 8 times in 10 years (not a frequent event), got it three times (just), the rest I was either clouded out or cloud passed over the sun 10 seconds before and left 30 seconds after. It is the most frustrating pass time. To go boldly with no filter at all and beat the smoke, well, that is an incredible feat
Alexandra
Re: ISS Solar Transit with NO filter
Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2018 8:41 am
by mattwastell
Great stuff - must have been extremely smokey - we have seen your fires on our local news - I hope you are safe. What was your unfiltered set up?
Re: ISS Solar Transit with NO filter
Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2018 5:15 am
by rbenton
Matt,
I live in El Dorado county which is mostly rural, and we get our fair share of fires. Yesterday there were two within sight of our house, prompting evacuation of our neighborhood. They knocked it down quickly and now it is out, but the smoke remains.
I shot this with a Celestron Omni XLT 127 ( a super-cheap 6" SC) and a ZWO ASI1600mm camera. I was prepared with a Baader Astro Solar filter, solar contiuum filter and IR cut filter. But once I set it up I was unable to locate the sun on the laptop screen. I took a chance and removed the front filter. I really didn't think it would work, but once I turned all the settings down it all looked OK. The settings in FireCapture were: Gain – 10, Exposure – 0.041 ms, Gamma – 50, and frame rate of 23 fps.
I would love to upgrade the scope to something better with a similar focal length (1250mm) but I don't know where to start looking. I like a lot of things about my Celestron, but it is just not very sharp, especially towards the edges.
The video looks like it must be downloaded to be viewed, but you can see it on my website here:
https://www.randallbenton.com/heavens/
Thanks to all for the kind words of encouragement.