I have been waiting for the opportunity patiently to capture this historic event with my telescope, but the passes of the International Space Station over London just ceased to happen shortly before 30th May – when the Demo-2 mission was launched. The amateur community were looking forward this event for years now and it is […]
Previously I have witnessed this incredible phenomena a couple of occasions, twice in 2018 (first and second time) and third time in 2019. But what exactly High Beta Angle season is? In this great article written by Dave Dickinson on Universe Today will explain it thoroughly. This morning was an early start, the International Space Station was […]
Taking photos of objects outside Earth’s atmosphere is always a challenging task, mostly not very successful. Apart from a few exceptions like Moon and Venus (and obviously the Sun), most objects are pale, has very low contrast. The International Space Station is no exception either, but occasionally when circumstances are right, it can be […]
I have noticed a few weeks earlier that around this time there will be a few favourable International Space Station close flyby passes to planet Venus. The fact that Venus just past greatest elongation (when it is at the greatest separation from Sun from our point of view) and the Space Station crosses […]
SpaceX has been using its cargo vehicle called Dragon-1 since the beginning to deliver precious cargo supply to and from the International Space Station (ISS). During the first contract between Nasa and SpaceX the commercial company committed to do certain amount of missions to ISS, this contract is called Commercial Resupply Services 1 or […]
Winters in UK are usually nobody’s favourite season, dump and grey for days and weeks. But occasionally we are given a day or two to do some level of astronomy photography. Not this winter though, it been tough for us, weeks, months few past without any break in this misery. I can certainly say it […]
This afternoon Luca Parmitano (ESA) and Andrew Morgen (NASA) astronauts conducted a spacewalk, part of a series of EVA’s planned to repair the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). I had a very promising flyby at an elevation of 85° between 17:25-17:30 and I calculated that the spacewalk should be ending by making their ways back […]
Currently I have been using my well tested ASI 224MC colour camera which I really love. To me International Space Station imaging is about colours as well as details, although I know it is not as beneficial as a monochrome camera for details. Mono cameras tend to deliver more finer details, no question about it. […]
This is not one of my extremely successful sessions, but I wrote this post because I would like to put out my experience about using an IR Pass filter for International Space Station imaging. Weather prediction Weather forecast prediction was awful in the past 10 days and it looks like this evening flyby […]
Dealing with miserable weather I was waiting for one clear night after many failures in the past few days. Particularly 26th September was very painful, did the setup in front of my block of flats, it was clear with gusty winds, but clear at least. I have seen the Cygnus cargo spacecraft flyby, but […]
This was probably one of the finest moments since I have been taking photos of the International Space Station (ISS). Forward planning is key for these kind of events, but since success depends on so so many factors totally independent of me the only thing that can be done is waiting, preparing and hoping for […]
Lunar transits are becoming one of my favourite events lately, the thrill is something like with no other celestial events. My heart is pounding harder and harder as the transit time approaches, triple checking every single details just in case if I missed something. And when the right time has arrived I just wait for […]
Now this is what I call near failure! These “almost” events are always fun when you look back at them later, but only if the endgame is positive (of course failures never make it to a video). Weather forecast was hmmmm, well a mix bag, 10 minutes before the transit time it did not look […]
Always exciting when a new ISS imaging session begins. We are already in a very niche period of the year when ISS makes 4-5 flybys during the nights which gives plenty of opportunity to see it. Also ISS is in a so called High Beta Angle (more information in this great article written by […]
This time I had great company, namely Nicholas Joannou (Nick) amateur astronomer and astrophotographer with whom I will hold lectures in London about International Space Station imaging . We plan to start with the lectures this summer, so watch this space for more information. Lunar transits are rare and even if they happen they are […]
Evening International Space Station flyby period over London with very bright and high elevation passes, so I wanted to make the best of it. Three days ago I miserably failed with focusing, have not had this kind of problem for a while. So on 31st March I really wanted to nail it as good as […]
First International Space Station close-up imaging since the Crew Dragon mission. Timing is perfect, the weather was so bad in the past few weeks and it just got back to clear days when high elevation flybys began. This was the very first bright pass with the maximum elevation of 53°. I was experimenting with […]
For a start let’s make it clear, what do we actually see now? If you followed the SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo-1 mission, you might already be familiar with the spacecraft and its new design. It consists of two main parts, the cabin (pressurised) and the trunk (unpressurised) sections. It looks like this. After staying […]
SpaceX and its historic Crew Dragon maiden flight Half of the world held its breath when finally the SpaceX Falcon-9 left the iconic Lauch Pad 39A, atop of the rocket Crew Dragon which began its maiden flight. The original launch date was delayed by weeks, but finally on the 2nd March she was flying! […]
Lunar transit is something I’ve been craving for a long time now. I had some experience in this from the past, but it never turned out to be as good as I expected. But let’s be honest, it is not an easy task. Not only commitment required, but also circumstances must be perfect – Moon […]
Another imaging session – this time around with good result. When I began the setup, totally clear sky waited for me, though I knew it will be short lived. The satellite photos were showing a huge proportion of clouds heading toward London, so I was hoping to get it done before disaster strikes. Racing against […]
Last time I had appropriate weather during ISS bright flybys over London was last year 7th December, when I got luck with the station and the SpaceX Dragon CRS-16 cargo mission en route to ISS. I usually do not expect miracles during winter months, but such a long period of break is simply painful. But this week […]
(click on the individual highlighted spacecraft names below for more details about each imaging sessions, predictions, equipment used etc.) Yay I can proudly say finally that I took photos of all the currently used cargo vehicles servicing the International Space Station. Started with Cygnus OA-8 in December 2017, then the Progress MS-07 in April 2018, followed by HTV-7 in September 2018 […]
(click on photos and animations for full screen view) Right now as I am writing this post, the rendezvous of SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft just began. It is now approaching slowly the International Space Station getting closer to Canadarm, which is a robotic arm that will grapple the vessel and will eventually move to the […]
Brief story of the event On the 20th November 1998 Roscosmos launched the Zarya module, the first element of the International Space Station. A few days later on the 4th December NASA launched the Unity module and the Space Shuttle crew connected the two main part of the station. I think the rest is history. […]
Absolutely dreadful weather in London these days, I missed most of the morning passes sadly. Only had one clear morning when I could go out, do the setup and give imaging a go. Sky was clear, but the seeing did not allow me to take as detailed photos as I wanted. The japanese HTV-7 Kounotori […]
A wonderful autumn morning with a promising International Space Station (ISS) lunar transit prediction. During the transit Moon was at an elevation of a bit over 39° above horizon, the predicted distance was 624.7 km from my location and visual magnitude of ISS was -3.5. Not extremely ideal, but close enough to have a decent result […]
Since the amazing last week chasing the International Space Station and the approaching and eventually arriving japanese HTV-7 Kounotori (White Stork) cargo vessel, I have been waiting for the right evening to capture a real good shot of ISS. I managed to take a shot just before and after berthing to ISS, but that was […]
This past few days were educational! After all the misery about when HTV-7 will be visible a day before berthing, luckily I caught a nice frame of the cargo vessel which made my whole year! The day after I had clear skies in London once again, was hesitating for a while if I should go […]
What a wonderful few days behind us ISS fans! (click on photos to fit screen) In these moments when I am writing these lines, HTV-7 is only a few metres of a distance from ISS and its robotic arm called Canadarm. It will grab HTV and move to Harmony module. We have all been desperately […]
This morning I was only hours away from the launch of JAXA’s cargo spacecraft called HTV-7 – launch is at 9:59pm BST tonight. I was struggling with weather conditions lately in London, somehow every morning sky was cloudy or I did not have time to do imaging due work. HTV-7 supposed to fly on Monday […]
Since my first few attempts at 4800mm of focal length back in Hungary I simply could not wait for the next ISS flyby season from London. It finally began lately and had two mornings in a row with clear sky. The first was on the 6th September when the maximum elevation of ISS was 79°. […]
Although I live in London, sometimes I visit my home country Hungary for short holidays. This summer my 10″ dobson telescope was coming with me too, mainly because I desperately wanted to try out imaging the ISS under mostly calmer and clearer hungarian sky. Usually I use a TeleVue 2.5x powermate and recently had the […]
Back home in Hungary we’ve organised a public event where people could come over and take a look through out telescopes. Besides observing planets and certain deep space objects we saw the ISS crossing the night sky silently. Whilst the spectators were observing ISS with naked eye, I’ve tried to take a decent photo of it. It […]
ISS and SpaceX Dragon CRS-15 few hours before docking SpaceX’s Falcon-9 rocket and the 15th Dragon cargo vehicle has been launched on 29th June 2018. The target date for Dragon capture by Canadarm-2 was 2nd July. Although we didn’t have evening passes at this time, instead there was a predicted solar transit of the International […]
Spacecraft on the far side of ISS – namely the Soyuz MS-08. Wait up, what??!! Spacecraft on the “far side” of the station? Yes…. but let’s start from the beginning. Every ISS flyby photography begins with a bit of reading. I take a look at the predictions (which you can find in Guide to find ISS […]
Real clear sky welcomed the two forecasted ISS passes for that evening. The first was less ideal, the result was okey but not great. This is the best frame from that first pass. The second pass of the evening had a maximum altitude of 55°. I was out on my balcony so I missed a […]
Uninterrupted clear morning sky at last, no racing with clouds at this time around. Very rare occasion, when a Soyuz spacecraft – namely this time MS-07 – is so nicely illuminated, that you can see its solar panels too! On the photo below I’ve marked the spot where one can see the Soyuz. Soyuz MS-07 […]
On that night I was about to have my coolest evening. The International Space Station and two cargo vehicles (first SpaceX Dragon then the Progress MS-07) were about to cross the evening sky. Sadly unexpected clouds prevented me from taking photos of the ISS and Dragon, but it perfectly cleared up for the Progress MS-07 […]
Have you ever wondered what does it look like watching the International Space Station silently crossing the evening sky? I normally use this camera equipment for close-up photos. But this evening weather was way too unpredictable, so I put my ASI224MC planetary camera with a 150° wide angle lens on a tripod, grabbed my laptop […]
I was travelling from South London to Peterborough (yes quite a distance) to capture the event. Weather looked promising, but we don’t take good weather forecast for granted in astrophotography… especially not in the UK! I took both of my scopes (5″ maksutov and a 10″ dobson) and I was only hoping to come home […]
The highlight of the evening was definitely the Cygnus cargo vehicle flyby, but I paid attention to the usual ISS imaging too. ISS came first and the flyby served as a test. The camera settings are the same that I have been using since discovering the correct values by experimenting. Once I saw the raw […]
I have been only dreaming about taking an image of Cygnus OA-8 since it departed form the International Space Station on 6th of December. This morning (11th December) I have never imagined this will happen tonight as it was snowing till about 1pm in London. But satellite pictures showed that it might clear up so […]
It was a very early start today with a few tasks in my head that I wanted to accomplish – mainly planetary related. Now I can say it was a relatively successful session, I did everything what I have planned and the final results very pretty good too. At least I am satisfied with it. […]
Today was a hectic day. Early morning imaging was completely ruined by the arrival of unexpected clouds. The planned 8:57am ISS transit seemed to be in jeopardy. But I still did hit the road – and surprise surprise, clouds disappeared and suddenly I was good to go. Was only hoping to get something nice out of […]
This is a very special post for many reasons. I’ve been imaging the International Space Station for years now and it usually takes time to get used to the new astronauts – at least to me. Thomas Pesquet is one of the really cool ones in my opinion, he was heavily involved in science (just […]
According to my blog post form back then: First of all I must begin with the fact, that 2017 was a disappointing year so far in terms ISS close up imaging. Whenever I had time and had bright overhead passes, weather treated me poorly, never really helping me to achieve my plans. Especially now, when […]
Weather was bad, I mean unpredictable, miserable and most importantly cloudy. Cloud movement made it impossible to predict if it will be clear or not during the flyby. But I really could not care more, I had so little amount of opportunities back then due bad weather I had to go for it. Here […]
When I arrived to Las Palmas I already knew about a wonderful composite photo taken by a german astrophotographer (see the related articles at the bottom of this post). The shot was amazing, real professional work I must say. During my stay on the island internet was not something I often used. Purely because I […]
A curious story comes with these photos I took on 13th January 2016. At first look there was something unusual happening on these ISS frames. Somehow one of the eight Solar Arrays shone brighter than the others. I did not really understand on that evening what was exactly going on. Next day I did […]