Hi Guys - here is my image taken tonight of the decaying spy satellite USA 193 as it crossed through the heart of the Orion Constellation. About 10 minutes later, the ISS did the same thing, from a 90º angle. The faint line is the trail of USA 193, at Magnitude 1.2, while the brighter line is the Magnitude -2.4 ISS.

This is a 4x6-inch crop from a much larger image taken with a Losmandy G11 Gemini mounted Canon D40, using an 28-135mm lens set at 28mm, ISO 640, using 30-second subs, live-view focusing and mirror lockup. The combined exposure time was just over 30 minutes. DeepSkyStacker combined all the images. Then the combined image was imported into Photoshop CS, where the individual images showing the trails (2 for each satellite) were overlaid as separate layers, using the "Lighten" mode in Photoshop, so the trails would show.

No dark frames, flat fields, bias frames or image clean-up was done on the final image. I plan to use darks and bias frames at least, but it will take all night long for the computer to combine all the individual files. The final image was rotated 90º so it looks like what was seen visually.

{Edit} - I just found, by going through the original files individually, that I had also captured the trail of the Tropical Rainfall Monitoring Mission - TRMM satellite just before 7:00 p.m. PDT. It was Magnitude 2.0, but shows very faintly in the original images. This was the faintest of the 3 trails captured going through the Orion Constellation tonight. I will try to add the two images that made up the whole trail. The TRMM cut through Orion just above his feet, essentially knocking him off his feet. First he got hit in the chest by the other 2 satellites, and now this! Looks like Orion had a hard night

Comments, questions, and critiques welcome. This is pretty crude, but it was incredible to see visually - the ISS was extremely bright tonight!

Clear skies!

Paul

Attached Images

Orion Constellation with USA 193 and ISS-layers4-rotated 4x6-curves and levels-flat-150dpi.jpg (140.7 KB, 126 views)

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That was cool. It came out with Orion perfectly centered! I was thinking how cool it would be if someone got a photo of the satellite being struck by the missile, but I'm thinking it will probably done when it is over an ocean or very remote area.

Brilliant image !

What time did you catch it ??

...and was it from

Location: 34.2237° N, 118.5657° W

Be very interested to know

Thanks

Hi Paul.
This is a great capture, well done. I like how you stay of top of the timing sequence that is required for tracking fast moving objects. Do you use Heavens above or calsky for your info. Good job. Clear skies to you Paul.

Hi Paul A fine capture of all three objects!. Welldone and thanks for the info. Clear Skies

The collision may take place where it is visible, but the debris field would be down range from that maybe. I'm not sure how far that would be, but it seems it might place the collision within sight.

Thanks EndeavorRX7, satcom, Paul, Efrain and hhEb09'1 for the nice comments.

satcom, I took these images from my backyard, which is the location you posted. I live about 25 miles northwest of downtown Lost Angeles, amidst some of the worst light pollution in Southern California. I'm right in the central section of the San Fernando Valley, about 1 mile from a huge shopping center and numerous car dealers. There's 2 million people living in the Valley, and as a result of poor light management, my skies are probably between Mag 2 and 3 most times – pretty pathetic, but I get probably close to 300 viewing nights a year (maybe more, I’ve never really counted them). We’ve had a lot more rain this year, so the number is somewhat lower. My usual thing to contend with is wind. It seems the desert north of where I live is the closest place I can usually go if my skies turn to mush.

The total image capture time ran from 6:27 p.m. PDT to 7:04 p.m. The actual time for capturing the passing of USA 193 into Orion was at 6:33 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. for the ISS. The camera was set at Daylight White Balance, lens aperture set at f/4.0.

Paul, I have only used www.heavens-above.com for all of my shots of the ISS, other satellites, and the Iridium flare images I posted some time ago. It seems to be quite accurate – usually the Iridium flare timings are within a second or so of their prediction.

I'm including one of the original images so you can see how much was cropped for the final image originally posted above.

Clear skies!

Paul

Attached Images

IMG_4299-small.jpg (115.4 KB, 29 views)

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