Space Station with a Modified Webcam

Last summer I bought a really cheap webcam on Amazon prime day and modified it to attach to my telescope. I tried it on the space station once with disappointing results.

Tonight I had a 79 degree pass with a maximum brightness of -3.8 and I figured that might be bright enough to make the webcam work.

I collimated the telescope, focused using a bhatinov mask, and tried to set my exposure on Sirius. The webcam drivers have errors so the recording software on my laptop can't tell me what the correct shutter speed is, making this part very difficult. I set the gain (ISO) to the maximum 255, and shutter as fast as I could while still seeing Sirius.

These images were created by stacking 2-4 good frames and doing some sharpening with wavelet filters in registax.

I'm pretty blown away how good these are for a cheap webcam! The structure of the station is definitely visible and radiator panels are very distinct.

I'm very excited to possibly buy a planetary camera to see how much better I can see the station!

I also realized just before the pass that the SpaceX dragon capsule departed the station earlier in the day. The capsule was already too far away to see in the same frame as the station itself, but a long exposure might be able to see two streaks.

It was a good try but I don't see a streak for the dragon capsule, oh well!

This one was ISO 5000 and a 30 second shutter speed. It's pretty, but only one streak.