The SatCatcher in action

After a cloudy day, the evening settled in looking clear. I had two targets for the SatCatcher last night. The ISS and Iridium 25. This time, a more accurate alignment was important as I had planned on using the camera zoom to better frame the pass. First up the ISS. I got setup about 10 minutes early, and as the sky was still really rather pale didn't look about with the bins. With just a minute to go, I went out to capture the image, and a bank of thin cloud had rolled in over my target area. I figured it was worth a shot anyway as a -2.2 mag pass might have burned through the cloud cover. But alas no. I triggered the camera, the shot took place, I looked and a moment later the ISS appeared from the top of the cloud bank. Checking the camera I had an ok picture of some clouds.

About an hour later and time for Iridium 25. I looked out again with about 2 minutes to go, and the cloud that I had expected to blot out the sky had cleared. So I took the camera and SatCatcher back out and aligned everything up. I didn't leave myself enough time to setup the SatCatcher this time, so the shot wasn't central, but the flare was caught nicely at about 5x to 6x zoom on the camera.



I just hope I get a clear spot around the time of the mag -7 flare tonight.