Spotting Flares and Stations

The clouds have been back in force for nearly a week again, after the nice weekend. Not so bad I suppose as I do have to work. There have been a few Iridium flares forecast for early evening. On wednesday, whilst out and about with a bunch of people, I happen to carry a compass with me on the off chance, and there was a break in the clouds at just the right moment. Most of the 30 of us spotted the Mag -5 flare of Iridium 42.

This evening, however, started out clear. The prediction was even earlier, making imaging a real toughie against the bright sky, but I tried anyway. Suffice it to say, my youngest and I saw Iridium 80 at Mag -6, but I only managed to get a bright glary sky image and no sign of the satellite, even with setting the camera to minimum aperture. Ho hum.

About 45 minutes later, the ISS was sheduled to pass over at mag -2.3, and I setup to capture this. I still had the long lens on the camera, set at the shortest focal length (55mm), and here's the result with the ISS at maximum altitude.



As the ISS passed onwards across the sky, I quickly swung the camera around, turned on liveview, found the dot, and fired another shot.



A little later, the sky was still clear, I grabbed the scope, power supply and case of gear and headed out. I went back in for the camera, attached the nosepiece, stepped outside, and in that minute it had taken me to grab the camera and my coat, the clouds moved in and took over the sky. Ho hum, I'd been hoping to have a go at imaging M33 this time around. It'll still be there another night.