Artemis II Orion Capsule "Integrity"

On 1 April 2026, the Artemis II mission launched for a crewed trip around the Moon.  I had heard that, in the Apollo missions, the spaceships were viewed and/or imaged from several ground-based telescopes, and I wanted to try it myself.

The first task was to figure out where, exactly, the capsule would be. After figuring out that the "Integrity" would rise from my location around midnight, and after verifying that I might have some clear weather, I used the JPL Horizons database to generate an ephemeris of the right ascension/declination coordinates as seen from my location:

I saved it as a CSV and imported it into a spreadsheet, where I used a table of predicted brightness values based on distance to figure out if it would *really* be visible:

I also imported these coordinates into Stellarium so I could visualize their actual location in the sky at the various times. I did this by creating a Javascript script that I then pasted into the Stellarium script editor:


The markers then show up in Stellarium:


Thus prepared, I went to my dark site (Bortle 3)
and set up my scope, a Celestron Origin 6" f/2.2 RASA with a Sony IMX 678 sensor. After a few false starts (it was very windy! And I kept losing wifi) I managed to grab a 30-minute sequence of 10-second exposures at the default gain ("ISO" 1000). I processed it in PixInsight to get the "motion-blurred" version:


The gaps are due to wind gusts causing the image to become a blurry mess at those moments.

I also made a video and an animated GIF of the sequence (EDIT: I should have had that extra coffee BEFORE uploading the video; I somehow missed half the frames with the previous one):





And now, time for more coffee...


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Response to Woodward letter

On December 18, 2014, I received a letter from Rocky Scott, the Director of Corporate Relations with Woodward, Inc.  The letter was remarkable for its bullying and intimidating tone.  It also repeated several false statements, in an apparent attempt to extract more taxpayer money from the citizens.  In response, here are the facts: Homestead Natural Area was not a gift from Woodward.  It was part of a $23.5 million taxpayer-financed package, which was adopted by Council on March 26, 2013.  The agreement says the property was “conveyed”, not donated, which just means Woodward transferred ownership to the City as part of the deal. The City of Fort Collins is not required to ask the voters for millions of additional dollars to fund the Lincoln Avenue project next to Woodward.  It has always been up to Council whether or not to refer this question to the voters.  And, if Council should ask, you are free to vote “no” on the question. It is impor...
Read more

GoPro Hero3 Black Field of View

Image
I got two  GoPro Hero3 Black cameras and am planning a panoramic project with them.  However, to do the project correctly and accurately, I need a good read on their field-of-view.  So, I set up a tripod and a grid and a tape measure, and took a few photos.  Here they are, desaturated and contrast-enhanced, with central red dots and some annotations.  First, measuring the diagonal FOV: Next, the horizontal FOV: Finally, the vertical FOV: The front of the camera lens was almost exactly 17 inches from the grid.  The camera body started about 17.25 inches from the grid.  Assuming the sensor is embedded some distance into the body, I used an estimated field-to-sensor distance of 17.5 inches.  This yields the following field-of-view, in degrees: Diagonal: 146 Horizontal: 121 Vertical: 93 Doing a little interval math on the field-to-sensor distance shows these angles are accurate to about plus or minus 1.5 degrees. Int...
Read more

Five Planets and the Moon

Image
I got up this morning very early to make an animation of Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, the Moon, Venus, and Mercury as they rose in the early morning sky.  Here is the finished product: It was very cold - 7 degrees Fahrenheight - and very early.  This is a 30-minute sequence starting at 5:39 AM and finishing at 6:09 AM.  All of the images have the same parameters: Canon 7DmkII camera Canon 8-15mm f/4L lens, locked at 10mm (widest useful zoom with this lens on a 1.6x crop camera) 8 second exposures at ISO 3200 Image sequencing performed by Canon's EOS Utility.  A capture was started every 15 seconds. That camera/lens combo yields a 180-degree diagonal field-of-view.  Jupiter and Mercury are about 120 degrees apart in these images, so this gives some extra room for animation and cropping. Capturing all five planets in the pre-dawn skyglow is surprisingly tricky, especially when city light pollution is contributing to a murky lower atmosphere. ...
Read more