ISS With My Cellphone

I’ve been experimenting capturing the ISS with my webcam, but it seems like the webcam may not be sensitive enough. The space station requires a very fast frame rate which means that very little light reaches the sensor for each image. I’ve had luck using my cell phone in the past but I haven’t tried with my current phone, so I'm not sure what to expect.

Tonight I had a 44 degree pass at -3.0 brightness, but it was at 8:30pm and the sky was still pretty light. I focused the telescope on Jupiter, set the frame rate to 1/1258.3 seconds, and an ISO of 4500 on my phone app. Through the camera app I can tell the cell phone camera sensor is much more sensitive than my $17 webcam, though this shouldn’t be that surprising considering it's a nice smartphone.

Using a 9mm lens and a 2x barlow I was able to easily track the station but also get good zoom. Around 700 of the 2000 frames in my video included the station, which is astounding compared to other methods. Thankfully with so many frames I was able to do some good stacking.

I’m very pleased with the outcome, but more so with the potential of this method. I think I over exposed slightly, so there isn’t much detail in the station itself or between the modules and solar panels. If I turn the exposure down I think I could get some real detail in the station.

I have a 70+ degree pass in the next few days, fingers crossed for good weather!