Calsky sent me a email recently saying that the International Space Station (ISS) would be transiting the Sun on the 11th of July 2012 and it would be visible from my location on Anglesey. I bet Calsky isn’t based in the UK because it certainly didn’t check the weather forecast !
BUT with an hour to go to the transit at 12:38BST blue patches started to appear so I set up my NEQ6 Pro mount and loaded my 4″ f11 refractor, which has been modified for Hydrogen Alpha solar imaging, onto the mount and did a quick ‘polar alignment’ on the Sun.
High hazy clouds didn’t help focusing the DMK21 video camera but eventually I had it somewhere close and the waiting began.
and then it was over in 1/4 of a second !
The video of the transit below shows the transit in realtime and then slows it down so the ISS can be seen.
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Within the 3 second video there were 13 frames of the ISS captured
and I ran the individual images into Registax 6 to see if I could get a reasonable image of the ISS
Kev, that’s freaking awesome. I know how difficult that must have been, and you’ve done a fantastic job. Also, images like that really put into context how tiny and fragile our presence in space really is.