Tiangong-1 (Heavenly Palace) - Chinese Space Station

Tiangong-1 (Wikipedia)

Tiangong-1 (literally: "Heavenly Palace 1") is China's first space station, serving as both a manned laboratory and an experimental testbed to demonstrate orbital rendezvous and docking capabilities. Launched unmanned aboard a Long March 2F/G rocket on 29 September 2011, it is the first operational component of the Tiangong program, which aims to place a larger, modular station into orbit by 2023. As of September 2011, Tiangong-1 was projected to be deorbited in 2013 and replaced over the following decade by the larger Tiangong-2 and Tiangong-3 modules. However, Tiangong-1 remains in orbit as of 2016. (source "Wikipedia")





In my entire life I have seen this very space station only three times. Once in January during my visit to Gran Canaria. Unfortunately I didn't have my imaging equipment with me on that morning, so I saw it only visually. Sadly that was the end of the visible passes from that location....
Few days ago I realized Tiangong-1 will be visible from UK for a few days, will be at it's brightest on the 1st and 2nd of July. From my two attempts the first was a success, second a total failure...

I have used www.heavens-above.com website this time to find out the when, where from and the brightness details.
The screenshot on the left gave me the basic reference points. My idea was to somehow capture it close to Mars, most ideal case transiting Mars (on the 2nd of July). But the experience I have gained during the 1st of July attempt made me change plans.

The Chinese Space Station is a difficult target after all. It only came as high as 16 degrees above the horizon, which means by the time I could image it due tree obstruction in front of my balcony, the distance between me and the station was around 1100-1250 km. The ISS would look smaller too at this distance, so being aware of this I used a radical equipment - SW 127 mak + TeleVue 2.5x powermate + ASI 120MC. This was a powerful setup, giving me a whopping 3750 mm of focal lenght.

That could have been pretty promising, but difficulties did not end here. Based on my experience on planetary imaging I was aware, the powermate will limit me a lot as it allows less amount of light to hit my camera's sensor than without. Adding this to the fact, that Tiangong brightened up only at a value of mag +3.0 which is very very faint compared to ISS ( good overhead passes are between mag -1.0 and mag -3.9).

My photo of Tiangong-1

I remember watcing back the footage I shot was an unpleasant feeling, because the station acted like a bright chewing gum on my screen. The problem lied in the settings, I guess video settings were quite underexposed.  I did not have much faith, nearly deleted the footage straight away.

Luckily I didn't :)

After going through every single frame - I have found ONE single frame which showed me something only in my wildest dreams I dreamt of. I know it might be slightly squashed - mainly due poor seeing (wild jet stream at the moment) and the vast distance, especially the solar panels look squashes a bit.

But hey, it's definitely there, the main body structure with the two solar panels on the sides.

Already much much more that I have previously expected :P

International Space Station transiting our Sun

I have been planning this for some time now, but somehow did not have any luck with Sun and ISS these days. Today the predicted transit was about to happen at 12:35:28 from Wimbledon, United Kingdom.

Weather


The weather was splendid till about noon, when suddenly clouds began roll in, luckily scattered ones so looked like a good 50-50% success-fail ratio. Well just about 20 seconds after the transit, thin clouds obscured the Sun, but I was already very very happy by then :)


Prediction and details

I have used ISS Transit Prediction app, but wasn't 100% accurate (again), it gives an amazing estimate but to be fully sure about the exact path through the disk of Sun, I would recommend to use CalSky. Here is what the website said:

Centerline for the transit

CalSky shows the actual sunspots too, which helps to identify where ISS will enter and exit the disk of Sun

Equipment


The usual Skywatcher 127/1500 maksutov was my main tool to capture the transit of ISS (with a Zwo ASI 120 MC color camera), but for the second time the 0.5x focal reducer was a huge help, I could squeeze a 50-60% the disk of Sun in my FOV. The only mistake I made is that I didn't check CalSky, only the ISS Transit Prediction app and the expected path through Sun was slightly off from my expectations. 

According to the app and my basic calculations, ISS should have gone through sunspot region 2536 and 2535, but ISS entered the disk above 2536 so missed a few frames sadly.
Conclusion: Always check CalSky.....




Final result

Animation of the 15 frames containing ISS

Photo in original:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/metrolinaszabi/26189062174/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Mars rotation - Saturn moon hunt

Mars


Living in London, but in general being on the northern hemisphere drives amateur astronomers to the obvious conclusion, that Mars and Saturn are way out of our reach, at least from a photographer's point of view., Mars crawls only 16°  above the horizon.  It is going to be like this for a while, so I stopped getting angry about it and decided to make the most of it.

Mars rotation

Early wake up today, weather report predicted clear sky over London, seeing wasn't the best but hey, who has any expectations in this town?? :)

So set the alarm for 2am, after 3 hours of sleeping I did my usual quick setup on my balcony.

Had to wait a little for Mars till I had a clear view on it. Focused on the Moon and started shooting. my first video was taken at 2:40am and the last at 3:31am.

I used my beloved Skywatcher 127/1500 maksutov tube, a TeleVue 2.5x Powermate with my ASI 120MC colour camera with settings like this:
- gain 65

- shutter 7.830

It amazed me how much this red planet rotated just under one hour duration.

Saturn

Mars and Saturn played hide and seek with the trees in front of me. When one was visible, the other one was obscured by the trees and the other way around. So at least I had time to spend on both without being rushed.

This was the original video I shot.....

This normally does not look promising, but I tried to get the best out of it using Autostakkert 2, Registax 6 and Photoshop. Saturn is at magnitude +0.2, so I had struggled with it compared to Mars (magnitude -1.3). It means that longer videos required for the same amount of frames as frame rate is lower due less amount of light hitting the sensor of the camera.

After processing this is my best, I could dig out some useful details.....










Also took a long video with more sensitive settings. It was quite challenging to capture any of them. The visual magnitude of the two moons were +9.0 (Titan) and +10.2 (Rhea).

And eventually these are all my Saturn shots I've ever took since I do astronomy. In a few years time this will be one of my best photos, if I can keep on taking shots every year...

Mercury

Photo from WinJupos - as it looked on the 19th April

Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System and the one closest to the Sun, with an orbital period of about 88 Earth days, which is much faster than any other planet in the Solar System. Seen from Earth, it appears to move around its orbit in about 116 days. It has no known natural satellites. It is named after the Roman deity Mercury, the messenger to the gods.

On the 19th of April we had exceptionally great clear weather in London, no clouds and the atmosphere was calm. Because Mercury was nearly the farthest it can be from the Sun, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to take an image of it. 

I must admit, that my 127/1500 maksutov tube isn't probably the most suitable instrument for the job, but ever since I bought it keep surprising me with it's performance. Once again it happened.

Waiting for Mercury - equipment ready

Sunset was at 8:06pm, but a good 40 mins went past till I finally could spot it. Mercury's visual magnitude was only +0.4. The equipment was long ready for shooting, managed to get sharpness and the proper alignment of the main scope/red dot finder on Jupiter.

The photo at the beginning of this post is from WinJupos, a free software that can show current phases and the actual precise look of any solid body (does not work on gaseous planets as their surface change all the time). 

So I was looking for a crescent shape when I was looking for Mercury on the laptop screen. When I first found it, is was a big relief. Didn't really know what to expect... I must admit visually is wasn't the greatest, due it's low position on the sky made it look distorted and color dispersion was present as well, the blue and red was on the top and bottom separately.

I took a few videos, but knew time wasn't on my side as Mercury kept sinking lower and lower.
The first process of my video gave my this result.






The color does not match, but I'm not surprised at all. By the time I took my first video (at 20:48), Mercury was only 10° above horizon. Mainly this must be the reason, why not many of the amateur astronomers taking photos of it, very low and very small, not a good pain for sure.


My best image processing result is this one, saturation is set to nearly zero. I did a few reprocessing, did all the videos I've captured just to compare them. Reason is that black line close to north pole. First I assumed to be a stacking error, but after reprocessing all the other videos they show it too. So I only guess that must be surface detail, which still hard to believe with this size scope.

What a difference 3 days make around Plato crater?

Well we all know, that our closest celestial neighbour has phases and it constantly changing as it revolves around planet Earth. The illumination of it's surface shown to us increases and decreases day by day, but the way to actually see how dramatic this change is if we take a photo of the same area with a few days difference.

The photo below is a composite of two shots, one was taken on the 16th April and the other on the 19th April.
They show roughly the same area - Mare Imbrium mainly. The dominant crater on this two photos is Plato, between Mare Imbrium and Mare Frigoris, left form Montes Alpes.
But Aristoteles, Eudoxus, Archimedes and Aristillus craters are also quite exquisite features.

See how surface details "fade away" as Sun gets higher in the sky (if you were on Moon). Because no shadow present, the whole surface becomes pretty pale and harder to make up fine details.
Most likely that's the reason, why terminator (the dividing line between lit and unlit areas) is the most interesting target for observers. It you slowly move your scope alongside it, fantastic surface details can be observed, such as craters, mountains, valleys, seas etc.

ISS transiting the Moon - experiment on reducer

Hunting for ISS is a tiring task, needs lots of passion and enthusiasm for sure.

I still did not forget the disappointment of two missed transit on Jupiter within the last week or two but I don't give up that easy. I realized that the app that predicts transits (called ISS Transit Prediction for android only) can be set to alarm you about the coming up event.

Well yesterday 25 mins before the pass my alarm went on. Sky was clear so did a very very quick setup and 5 mins before the pass I was all ready to capture the moment. 

Equipment 

Skywatcher 127/1500 maksutov scope on an eq5 mount. Teamed up with a Zwo ASI 120 MC colour camera, but if I only insert the camera, it will give me a very small 

field of view (FOV) - no surprise, that's what planetary cameras are 

designed for.

I used exactly this setup yesterday

So lately I spent a little amount of money on a no name 0.5x focal reducer to roughly half the focal length of my scope. 

 
It gave me a pretty good FOV and I don't need to sacrifice the
resolution or the clarity of the photo. This proved to be an excellent
setup for this purpose, planning to use it fot the Mercury transit as well.




Preparations


I use ISS Transit prediction app (only for android), but if I really want good accurate info, I visit CalSky website. They showed me the following information:

Proper description of the transit

Transit path on the map - zoomable on the website

This photo shows where ISS will appear relative to Moon's surface

Exposure



My ASI camera definitely does not like daylight, every time I had to deal with imaging in daytime it is just a bit of a pain. But in Fire Capture you can change the amount blue colour (Wblue) - otherwise the whole Moon will be just blue. But that little option helped to find a right(ish ) colour balance.

Main parameters:Gain                        18
Shutter                     0.747ms

Histogram               29%
ROI                         1280x960
FPS (average) =       26


Only strange thing I've noticed is that most likely my laptop memory couldn't keep up with the data flow, so it kept missing frames. It happened to me before, but not on a scale like this. You can see the photo below, I could even squeeze my name in the gap, at least a good 3-4 frames were dropped. Also it occurred one more time, when ISS was at the Mare Nectaris/Mare Fecunditatis area. But it is what it is, I personally can't do anything with it, only a laptop/camera update will help. Not a major issue at the moment :)


Result

Links

The photo above without the enlargement, but zoomable
https://www.flickr.com/photos/metrolinaszabi/26214830000/in/dateposted-public/

ISS once again - lower trajectory

Every time when ISS appears on a lower trajectory - this was 47 degrees I believe - we have a unique way to see it. Instead of standing under it, we see it from a side angle too.

I used a my 127/1500 mak to capture this video.

I just love as it turns over and giving us a great view :) I had to watch it a few time to figure out, which way it is facing and turning toward. 

Also my favorite is part of the time lapse video, when something suddenly brightens up. I recon it must be the solar arrays on the docked cargo vehicles - as we have a few park to ISS (Dragon, Cygnus, Progress). This was the very first time I recorded anything like this :)