Incredible video of space station flying in front of the moon

The ISS is 238646 miles from the moon. At an orbit of 254 miles, the ISS is orders of magnitude closer to the Earth.

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I had no idea that it would be sensible to connect a video recorder to a Dobsonian scope. I thought they were for lookie-loos only. (Disclaimer: The telescopes I work on are HUGE.)

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“lookie-loos” :smiley: Is that a technical description :smiley:

@TheGreatParis Fly casual. :+1:

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Spoiler: The moon is way, way farther :slight_smile:

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Dobsonians are good for things that don’t require long-exposure equatorial tracking. The Moon and the ISS overhead in the twilight zone are generally the two brightest objects in the night sky, and neither of them are on a precise equatorial track, anyway – the moon is slowly drifting relative to the fixed stars, and the ISS is whizzing across the sky.

Plus there’s tech trickery - these days we can motorize Dobsonians and let a computer translate equatorial (or other) motions to altazimuth mount motions.

Plus you can shoot multiple frames as something drifts across your FOV (or as you manually track with the altazimuth mount) and then stack them in software.

Dobsonians are great for “sidewalk astronomy”, but their huge aperture for the cost also makes them an attractive buy for the amateur astrophotographer.

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Came for this comment. Left satisfied.

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If it turns out that the earth really is flat, at least we’d be able to go to the edge of it and vomit over the side.

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