Observing Satellites & Iridium Flares

[jimmyleong]

the direction is somewhat south western according to my iphone compass.

looking through sky walk, it could be venus overlapping uranus

video taken with iphone, just showing a bright dot.

[Gary]

Yea. For an object that bright enough to be captured using smart phone camera, most probably a bright planet like Venus.

[superiorstream]

Hi,Gary
This morning,around 6:20am,saw an pin point bright object as bright as and same color as Jupiter going from north west to south east--cant be an aircraft for light not flicking and moving too fast--;it got to be Iss or perhaps the 'tiengong'.

[jimmyleong]

Yea. For an object that bright enough to be captured using smart phone camera, most probably a bright planet like Venus.

oh thanks. seems to be seeing it for the past few days. see if i can see it tonight.

[Gary]

Hi,Gary
This morning,around 6:20am,saw an pin point bright object as bright as and same color as Jupiter going from north west to south east--cant be an aircraft for light not flicking and moving too fast--;it got to be Iss or perhaps the 'tiengong'.

It's ISS at mag -1.6! Congrats! Tiangong 1 generally not so bright. Maybe need to dock a few more reflective modules in the future to beat ISS.

This is the ISS flyby info this morning from heavens-above.com:

**************************************

Date: Friday, 10 February, 2012
Satellite: ISS
Observer's Location: Toa Payoh Central ( 1.3339°N, 103.8505°E)
Local Time: Universal Coordinated Time -8 (GMT + 8:00)
Orbit: 377 x 405 km, 51.6° (Epoch 10 Feb)
Sun altitude at time of
maximum pass altitude: -15.3°

Event Time Altitude Azimuth Distance (km)
Leaves shadow 06:14:10 12° 353° (N ) 1,331
Maximum altitude 06:16:46 30° 55° (NE ) 738
Drops below 10° altitude 06:19:41 10° 118° (ESE) 1,453
Sets 06:21:54 -0° 129° (SE ) 2,314

[Gary]

Yea. For an object that bright enough to be captured using smart phone camera, most probably a bright planet like Venus.

oh thanks. seems to be seeing it for the past few days. see if i can see it tonight.

Yeah. Past few nights skies quite clear. Great time to observe and image. Don't let the bright Moon dampen our spirits!

[Gary]

ISS flyby tonight from 8:02pm Singapore time.


Image Credit: Heavens-Above

[weixing]

Hi,
Thanks Gary for the early warning...

Anyway, I was back early today and saw this early warning post. Suddenly, I got an idea: why not try shooting the ISS... After some calculation of the angular diameter, I realised that the ISS is quite big (~1 arcmin at maximum). I check my astrophotography speadsheet and look like it's possible to shoot the ISS with my Canon EF400mm F5.6L + 1.4x via my Canon 60D... although the image will be very small.

Below is the series of images I took and each image is crop and enlarge (2x).


Plan to try again with my birding friend using his 600mm + 2x very soon.

Have a nice day.

[Gary]

WOW! That's amazing Weixing! Can make out the classic ISS structure already, especially the 2nd last shot! Will tweet a link to your post so my followers can enjoy and retweet it. Especially those who saw ISS live last night as a public group!

Please shoot the next one this coming Thursday (tomorrow!) at about 19:46 which is the brightest, highest *and* most convenient time to observe in Singapore for the month of March 2012:

08 Mar -3.0 19:46:53 10° NW 19:49:57 64° SW 19:53:03 10° SSE

[kochu]

Nice try Weixing- Kochu