In r/astrophotography and r/nasa, hobbyists share techniques for imaging the Orion capsule as a faint moving target, using stacking, ephemeris data, and noting magnitude changes and tracking artifacts.
Today I had fun capturing the Orion capsule, traveling toward the Moon, at a distance of 314,500 km from Earth while I was taking the photos.
Compared to yesterday it has dimmed by two magnitudes, now it’s around +15 and was barely visible in the RAW files.
I stacked 32 shots of 30 seconds each: the capsule appears as a dashed line
Today I had fun capturing the Orion capsule, traveling toward the Moon, at a distance of 314,500 km from Earth
Using the ephemeris data published around 12hrs after launch, run through a script in Stellarium
That five-second GIF is a timelapse of about 58 minutes of observations with my 8" diameter reflector telescope, as the Orion capsule moves against the background stars.
This finding is one of many signals tracked across Space. The live feed updates every few hours with new authority voices, debates, and emerging ideas.
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