That is a remarkable image, Chris

Thanks, Jeremy. If the tracking had worked properly I would have been able to stack a few similar images, which would have reduced the noise and allowed a bit of sharpening. Next time . . .

Hi Chris, great image and thank you for sharing.

My question is how would one go about tracking the ISS to capture images for stacking?

John

Hi John,

Presumably you are talking about manual tracking. Various people, especially Thierry Legault, have achieved exceptional results with automated tracking. In summary, I use a piggybacked 66mm William Optics refractor with a crosswire eyepiece, which is co-aligned with the main telescope. I attach a handle to the back of the tube of the Newtonian, to give myself more control. When the ISS appears I start recording, and try to move the telescope to keep it on the crosswire of the piggybacked scope. As you can imagine, this is not easy, and the proportion of frames that have anything in them is small. The main  difficulty is that the angular speed of the ISS varies continually, so one is never moving the telescope at a constant speed. 

If you'd like to know more details I'm happy to share them by email if you drop me a line. chrishooker1<at>virginmedia.com

Chris