Hi guys – Here’s an image I captured the other night of the Lacrosse 5 Satellite as it streaked across the sky. According to
www.heavens-above.com, it was supposed to fade out of view (when it entered the Earth’s shadow) as it passed between Jupiter and Antares. So, I set up my ‘scope/G-11 Gemini mount/camera to hopefully capture it at the end of its visibility here in the Los Angeles area.
Image capture data: Date: June 25, 2007, 9:44 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time; Camera – Canon 20D; Lens – EF 28-135mm IS f/3.5-5.6, set at 135mm focal length; Other camera settings – ISO 800, Sunny (daylight) white balance, 30 seconds exposure at f/8.0, Shutter speed set to Bulb, Image size – Medium (1728x1158) .jpg format, Manual focus, Programmable remote shutter release used (set at 30 second exposure times). The camera was mounted on a top dovetail plate on my “new” Celestron C11 SCT, mounted on a Losmandy G-11 Gemini mount, roughly polar aligned; The Celestron C11 has a 2800 mm focal length at f/10; I was able to visually watch the satellite as it went through the field of view of a 55mm eyepiece, while the camera was recording its trail.
Multiple images were captured during the satellite’s visible passing through the area. This image is a combination of just the two consecutive images that contained satellite data. The two images were then combined with Image Stacker using the brighten mode. Image processing – PhotoShop CS was used only to adjust the midpoint (gray level) to reduce the red cast of the background sky. Very slight unsharp masking was done before saving the image as a .tif file and importing it into Neat Image for some noise reduction. The image was then saved and re-imported into PhotoShop to crop to 4x6 before adding the frame and text.
Jupiter is visible in the lower left side of the image, while red Antares is visible towards the upper right side.
Comments, questions and critiques welcome.
Paul
28-June-2007, 12:57 AM
Lacrosse 5 Satellite fades from view
Similar Threads
Linear Mode
