ISS Transit On The Sun Behind Clouds

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ISS Transit on the Sun behind Clouds
Taken by Giuseppe Petricca on November 3, 2015 @ Firenze, Tuscany, Italy

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Camera Used: Unavailable Unavailable
Exposure Time: Unavailable
Aperture: Unavailable
ISO: Unavailable
Date Taken: 2015:11:04 09:01:33

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After some months yesterday I had a new chance to image an ISS Transit over the surface of our Sun! The good spot for taking it this time was near Florence, in Italy, and I had also the menace of a cloud front coming from the west. As everyone can see from the picture, I managed to get the transit only with the Sun between some high clouds. The ISS showed up in three frames (on a total of 10 taken) and it's silhouette has been replicated to show the full transit direction. The difficulty in doing this kind of pictures with a reflex camera (since it is not good to do a video for its low resolution, even in FullHD) is that you have to use the 'burst shot mode' to try to capture the fast ISS when it is crossing the Sun. The data is: 1/2000" exp, ISO 1600, f6.3. The ISO set was high since the clouds were blocking a good portion of sunlight, to remain within very short exposure times, to 'freeze' the ISS during its transit. With my focal lenght of 500mm there are not a lot of details visibile, but the shape of the orbital structure (that has crossed the 15 year mark of continous human presence onboard ecently) is unmistakable.

Photographer's website:

http://www.astrobin.com/users/gmrphotographer/

Comments

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Great shot(s)! I like your use of fill-in shots to mark the path. I know first-hand how hard it is to obtain results like this--I tried a few weeks ago and had even worse luck with clouds than you. It had been 100% clear for hours prior to the all-important second, but just 5 seconds before the fly-by, heavy clouds completely obscured the Sun. Arrgh. Next time!
Im using a longer focal length scope (1250mm, on a crop-sensor Fuji X-T1) that is also much slower than what you used: f/13.8. That, coupled with the mylar solar filter I used resulted in too-slow shutter speed of about 1/200th, even at high ISOs. I wonder if I can get a less-dense filter? What brand/model did you use?
Cheers, and of course, Clear Skies!

Posted by tjerome 2015-11-04 09:54:09

Hi tjerome and thank you! I use those fill in since with a simple reflex Im never able to capture the entire transit like I would do with a planetary camera.
For your setup I can advice to buy a ND3.8 photographic Astrosolar Filter (the Baader one is the best and its the same that I use). It is really good, but its dedicated to photography so you cannot watch the sun with your telescope with it.
If you want to observe you must buy the ND5.0 filter, from the same brand.
Clear Skies!

Posted by Stormchaser 2015-11-04 11:25:58

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