From: Alan Friedman <alan@greatarrow.com>

Date: May 20, 2010 8:22:30 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] ISS Solar transit captured on Monday

sorry for the delay responding... very cool Jim!

best,

Alan

On May 15, 2010, at 6:13 PM, jimchung2338 wrote:

The Calsky website sent me an email last week to warn me that the ISS was transiting the Sun over my house at 5:53pm this past Monday.

So I raced home after work and set up two scopes to capture this event which I had been trying for the past 3 years.

I was imaging the whole solar disc with my ST80 guidescope and the large sensored PGR Scorpion at 400mm focal length and also at 2000mm focal length with the C8 and the PGR Flea, hoping to capture more details.

Well, I ran out of time and didn't quite get the C8 tightly focused and I believe it was aimed at the wrong place on the Sun as well. The Scorpion was a go and I imaged several minutes before and after predicted transit. When I watched the movie later ... it looked like a bust. Nothing.

After several people confirmed that Calsky orbital calculations always seemed to be on the money, I went back to view the movie fullscreen sized on my 27" IMac (quadcore!). After several more viewings I finally caught a brief flicker that held a straight line up the screen. It was there, a very low contrast ISS in only about 5 frames, very small. I had also been looking at the wrong area of the sun forgetting that the image was inverted! It has also appeared about 40 seconds earlier than predicted.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/files/Solar/ISStransit.jpg

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/files/Solar/solarscopesB.jpg

Jim