If At First ...

I've made several attempts to photograph the International Space Station as it traversed the lunar and solar disks. I've never been all that happy with the results.

I tried again today.

Clocks synchronized with their atomic brethren at Boulder, CO, I hit the shutter release at 8:09:23 AM. Cries of "there it is" coincided with the shutter clicks. Got it!

Click to Bigafy

This is a composite of nine images, each showing the ISS against the disk of the sun. Four sunspots are also visible.

The sun was relatively low in the sky, approximately 24° above the horizon. This meant that transit would be a long one, 1.49 seconds. The trade off being that the ISS was farther away, and thus smaller than if the transit was overhead. 

As with the previous attempts I was not alone, I was with a party of eight this time. Six of us shooting. My camera was set to continuous shooting, a 100-400 mm zoom lens attached, and proper solar filter* on. We all had frames with the ISS (not guaranteed, as my friend Drew tells how he got very nice before and after images one outing!). 

*Never look at the sun without proper filtering! 

This is a cropped image, 400 mm just isn't enough focal length. Everyone else was imaging with telescopes. I briefly toyed with using my 60 mm Hα scope, but having never shot through it I played it conservatively and used the lens. Perhaps next time.

My best so far, but still not anywhere near what others have accomplished. I guess I'll just have to keep trying.