International Space Station (ISS)

Canon 600d DSLR with a 66mm Altair Lightwave Doublet and 0.6x flattener/focal reducer used in combination as a telescopic lens.

" With the long summer nights, the moonlight strengthening with the Moons's increasing phase and the planets being below our local southern horizon, imaging at the Jodrell Plank Observatory has been restricted to close examination of the Moon. After a long imaging run exploring surface details presented at the Moon's first quarter, Pip Stakkert and I, whilst maintaining social distance, decided that we would watch the ISS pass over Lowestoft as it was pursued by the Space X Crew Dragon spacecraft. This orbital pass was too low for us to image the ISS with our equatorially mounted bigger scopes but we both wondered whether any sort of recognisable image was obtainable using  a low-tech point and shoot approach and a handheld DSLR camera with a telescopic lens. The lower half of the above image shows a typical widefield image obtained by our Canon 600d DSLR with a telescopic lens (f=240mm) handheld as described. The tiny white dot is sunlight reflected by the ISS! Pip Stakkert then used his 'digital skills' to enlarge and enhance a number of widefield images to produce a compilation of ISS images. We were surprised how much detail could be seen, particularly in numbers 1, 3, 5 and 8. The fast changing view or aspect of the ISS as it moved along its orbit is also clearly apparent as sunlight reflected off various elements of the space station. Mr Canon sure makes an excellent and robust low priced camera!" - Kurt Thrust acting CEO and current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Credits: ISS images NASA