Geostationary Eclipse with the Brand New SXM-8!

Every equinox I usually try to photograph geostationary satellite eclipses. I used to do it with a Fuji camera with the shutter taped down, then I moved to my planetary camera. The problem with the planetary camera is it's so zoomed in so it's hard to see more than 1 satellite at a time.

This past spring I bought a focal reducer to try and increase my field of view, and caught two adjacent satellites, XM-3 and XM-5. It came out so well that I want’t expecting to try again this fall, but conditions were too perfect not to try.

I had a perfectly clear night, and with SXM-8 recently taking position next to XM-3 and XM-5 I was curious if I could get all 3 in one frame.

I set up my telescope, connected the ZWO ASI290MC camera to my 2x focal reducer and got to work. I calibrated my finder scope on Jupiter and focused on the moons of Jupiter. From there I spent 20-30 minutes star hopping trying to find the satellites. My camera was on 250ms exposures at 550 gain to hopefully spot the dim stationary satellites among the moving stars.

I was getting worried I wouldn't find them but finally I found all 3 in one shot, spread out exactly as stellarium said they would be. I set my exposure to 5 seconds and gain to 350 and left my computer to record while I went to bed.

In the morning I was gifted with about 3000 photos that perfectly captured the eclipse without any satellites drifting out of frame.

First I made a short animation of the three satellites to prove I saw them in case I knocked the telescope and couldn't find them again. Next I got to work on presenting the full eclipse.

I'm thrilled with how this came out, especially last minute with only 1 clear night. The last time I saw SXM-8 it was in the clean room, so it's very exciting to see it all the way in geostationary orbit.

The last image to make was a combination of all individual photos into one large long exposure. You can see the satellites moving, and the gap where they were in the shadow of the Earth.