Archive ISS & Co

ISS 2022 #1


I haven’t done one of these in years – a long exposure of the International Space Station flying overhead yesterday night. First time with the fisheye lens too!

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ISS 2017 #3


Another ISS long exposure capture, this is from two nights ago. The brightness on the bottom of the frame is a combination of some clouds and my balcony lighting which I neglected to turn off, but it made for a nice effect with the station fading into it. This was again a two and a half minute exposure.

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ISS 2017 #2


Yesterday was another starry night perfect for catching the ISS, but by the time it came along for the second pass – on the first one it was still too bright to take a photo – a few clouds were beginning to appear. This time I took a longer exposure to let the ISS trail through the whole frame.

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ISS 2017 #1


Yesterday evening was the first time since 2015 that I’ve been able to catch the International Space Station on camera flying over my location. It was one of the brightest passes I’ve seen for a long time and there might be more in the next couple of days – but this photo is actually pretty good already. I used the Canon Powershot SX30 with CHDK to make a single two-minute exposure and I’m astonished how good it looks! I will try it with the Sony Alpha 65 too sometime, but I haven’t yet got a remote for it that would allow longer exposures than 30 seconds, which is vital for this kind of photo.

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Galleries: ISS Long Exposures


The only other kind of astrophotography I can do with my cameras is long exposures and combined with watching the International Space Station flying over at night, it makes fascinating photos. This involves finding out when the station is coming with websites like Heavens Above and then using the addon-firmware CHDK to persuade the camera to take exposures longer than 15 seconds. The Powershot S2 and S5 I used in 2012 and 2013 had quite a bit of sensor glow when I pushed them to 60 or even 120 seconds, but the SX1 has proven to be much better in that respect. I haven’t taken a lot of those photos over the last couple of years, but I’ve collected them all in the three galleries linked below. Click on the preview photo above to go to the 2015 gallery or the links below for the others – and for annotated photos, you can check out the single posts in the ISS & Co blog category. There’s also a G+ version with all images in one album over on my Google+ Profile or the Astrophotography Collection.

« ISS 2012 » | « ISS 2013 » | « ISS 2014/15 »

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ISS 2015 #8


Here’s the ISS flying over my hometown yesterday evening on my birthday, the first time I was ever able to see it on this particularly day! The image is a little bit too grainy for my taste, but I didn’t want to wash out all the additional star trails with a noise filter. The station actually faded out before it reached the horizon, which you don’t often get to see!

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ISS 2015 #7


I managed to see and photograph the ISS earlier – like many times before, but never actually on my birthday! Because I haven’t had time to process tonight’s photo yet, here’s one from August 3rd instead, which worked out quite well too. The bright light in the lower right through the tree was actually the rising Moon!

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ISS 2015 #6


This may be the last ISS long-exposure photo for now, because the good passes of the station are coming earlier each day when it is still to bright to take photos. I left this almost unprocessed save for some noise reduction and a slight colour correction in RawTherapee, otherwise it would have brought out only more noise and other artefacts. This was again a two-minute exposure with the Powershot SX1, which is actually only equipped to do 15 seconds, so the result is surprisingly good.

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ISS 2015 #5


Finally a well-timed long-exposure capture of the International Space Station, and I think I even got rid of all the hot pixels. This was the second pass at about half past eleven yesterday evening – the previous one was so early that the sky was still too bright for photography, although I was able to see it. As usual, this was taken with my Powershot SX1 running CHDK and processed in RawTherapee and PaintShopPro.

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ISS 2015 #4


This is what happens when you start the camera too late – the trail from the space station begins in the middle of the photo! I had configured something wrong and lost a couple of seconds, but it still turned out to be a nice picture so I didn’t even crop it. This was again a 120 second single exposure with the CHDK-enhanced Powershot SX1 – and if you want to spot the station yourself, the best website to find it is Heavens-above.com!

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