Harper and Papa Chasing the ISS

UPDATE: Keep reading for the "rest of the story" but here is the same image as below but cropped vertically to focus attention more on the ISS trail. Enjoy!

Our granddaughter Harper stayed with us this week. During the day, she was attending Dallas Parks & Recreation Outdoor Adventure Camp and the theme this week was photography. As I am an avid shutterbug I also spent a little time each evening with her, messing around with cameras, talking about how to take good pictures, etc. 

As I was checking to see what the evening weather would be with the idea that we could maybe take some night sky shots, I noticed that Tuesday evening the International Space Station (ISS) was going to be passing over. Even better, it would be rising just over downtown when seen from up by White Rock Lake. That night around 9:00 pm, we headed up to Winfrey Point and set up my Nikon D750 with an Irix 15mm wide angle lens. Once the camera was set up on the tripod, I let Harper take all the test shots and then we set the camera to shoot a sequence of 20 second shots. ISS was going to be visible for about 7 minutes, only 3 of which would be visible to the camera facing due west. After it passed overhead, we also tried capturing shots to the northeast but lights and trees were in the way.

The next day we loaded the captured images into Lightroom and I did some basic edits for exposure, contrast, etc. and then we loaded them as layers in a single image in Photoshop. As each layer contained a section of the ISS flyover, our goal was to follow instructions from this online article to stack all the images to end up with one image with a full track of the ISS, from when it was first visible (about 10 degrees above the horizon) until it passed out of the camera frame. 

Unfortunately, while the weather report had been for clear skies, there was actually a lot of haze on the horizon and clouds across the path of the ISS. Here is the result of just stacking all the images.

Harper thinks this version is kind of cool and I agree. The streaks of the clouds are pretty surreal and the airplane trails and the few star trails convey a lot of action.  The problem is that you can only get glimpses of the ISS trail as it is mostly obscured by the clouds. Even where it might have been clearly visible in one frame, once we stack all the other frames on that then some or all of it is obscured by the clouds. 

That led us to research other ways to achieve what we were after. With the help of ChatGPT, we learned some Photoshop techniques that allowed us to selectively mask out everything but the ISS trail, stack those and combine them with a base image that included the foreground with the lake and downtown Dallas and in which most of the clouds were to the right. We also removed a couple of airplane trails so that the ISS trail is the "star" of the image.

Here is the end result. It's not exactly what we intended to shoot - the ISS trail is spotty and the gaps don't always match the cloud gaps in the base image - but we are pretty happy with it. 

This was just the start, though. Now we are watching out for other nights when the ISS will fly overhead where the skies are clear and it will pass over an interesting foreground like the lake and downtown in this image. More to come!

If you are interested in finding out when the ISS flies overhead where you live, there are many resources but one of my favorites is the Heavens Above. Here is the ISS Visible Passes chart and here are the details for the flyover we captured. 

As always, click on an image to enlarge. Clear skies, y'all!

Chasing the Strawberry Moon Over Downtown Dallas - Remix

This is a remix of previously posted video of the 2023 Strawberry Moon, this time including a cropped view that better highlights the Strawberry Moon rising through the clouds behind Reunion Tower.

Watch full-screen for best view. 

Chasing the Strawberry Moon Over Dallas

Although the clouds interfered with getting a clean telephoto image of the full Strawberry Moon of 2023 above Reunion Tower in Dallas (my original goal), I was still able to capture this sequence of it through the clouds as it rose over downtown just after sunset on June 3rd. 

This is 34 minutes compressed into about 12 seconds. Watch center-frame and you'll see the moon just peak through the clouds and then pop in and out through to the end, tracing an arch up and above Reunion Tower.

Timlapse sequence captured with a Nikon D750 and Nikkor 24-120 lens at 40mm, shot from Trammel Crow Park on the Trinity River. Processed with Lightroom Classic, LRTimeLapse and Da Vinci Resolve.

See my shot of the Strawberry Moon over downtown last year here.

Music is Time's Up by Loopop, YouTube Media Library.

Watch full-screen to get the full effect. 

A Strawberry Moon Over Downtown Dallas

 

If you happened to be up early the morning of June 14th, 2022, prior to sunrise, you might have caught a glimpse of the full Moon. I say might, because if you  look closely you'll notice a wisp of clouds across the face of the Moon and within a few minutes of when this was taken, the clouds completely obscured any lunar view. 

This shot with the full Moon over Downtown Dallas was taken from Winfrey Point on the east shore of White Rock Lake. I had hoped to capture it lower, just above the city skyline shortly before it set but this was the last shot I got before the clouds moved in. If only the clear view had held for another 15 minutes!

You can still catch a view of this month's full Moon (weather permitting). Just step outside the evening of the 14th after about 9:22pm CDT and watch for it to rise in the east. Even early morning and late evening on the 15th it will still be almost full (about 98% illuminated). 

If you have watched news headlines in print, broadcast or online, you probably saw this Moon referred to as a Strawberry Supermoon. In simple terms, the name Strawberry is a historical name (among others) given to full Moons in the month of June and a Supermoon is just a full Moon when it is closer in its elliptical orbit around Earth than at other times. For more information on this month's Moon, check out this article about it on EarthSky.org. 

Click on the image to see full-screen.