<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7330925.stmSorry its a few weeks old but only just found it. What a great pic, would love to have something so powerful i could get a pic of the ISS like that <br /> Posted by bobble_bob</DIV></p><p>Actually, there are backyard astronomers who take pictures of orbiting spacecraft on a regular basis. It's unbelievably cool. The article doesn't talk about how pictures like this are taken, but it's really really cool. ;-) Basically, you need a decent sized backyard telescope (not necessarily huge), a CCD imager capable of taking lots of frames (a digital video camera, essentially), software for "stacking" images, an accurate clock, and a steady hand.</p><p>Stacking images is where you take a whole bunch of shots of the same thing and then use stacking software to add them all up. It has the same effect as a long exposure, and in fact, digital astrophotographers often use image stacking instead of long exposures, even of things like Jupiter which cooperate by not moving through the sky so quickly. </p><p>So you get your telescope set up, aim it where the spacecraft will be, and wait with one hand on the button to start capturing frames from your CCD camera. Then you have to track the spacecraft to keep it as centered as possible throughout the pass. That's the hard part, I understand, and it takes a lot of practice. Then you use your stacking software and probably also some digital image manipulation software to get the best result out of all of the images. And voila! You have a picture like this. It takes a lot of planning, and some work afterwards post-processing the images so they look nice.</p><p>I've seen many pictures of the ISS that people have taken, as well as shots of the Space Shuttle (with and without ISS), one of the Shuttle during the radar mission (SRTM) with the long boom visible, the ATV before it docked, Soyuz and Progress, and I seem to even recall seeing a Shenzhou picture. Obviously, the bigger the target, the better the picture will be, and the ISS is perfect for that.</p><p>I've also seen cool silhouette pictures. These don't require quite as steady a hand, but they do require a good watch and careful planning -- and if it's a daytime picture, a solar filter. These are pictures of a spacecraft transiting the face of a celestial body, often the Sun or Moon. One really memorable one that I've seen was the ISS taken during the Mercury transit. I'll see if I can find some of those pics. </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em> -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>
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