Hubble Space Telescope TrailHubble Space Telescope Trail
Maybe a boring picture, but perhaps less so when you realize the bright streak is the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) through my bigger telescope. This wasn't just a coincidence, but carefully planned. HST mostly stays very low in the sky from my latitude when visible at all, but thanks to SkySafari software I knew that there would be a more favorable HST pass that I had the possibility to capture on a mostly clear evening at Yellowwood State Forest.

I wasn't certain how precise the calculations in the software would be, but the location and timing turned out to be dead on as predicted. Kinda like a solar eclipse, you have to be at the right place at the right time, looking in the right direction.

The background image was from 4 minutes of exposure, while it took about 3 seconds for HST to cross the 41 arcminute wide field, at about 16º altitude. There are at least three faint galaxies visible in the image, though perhaps not in this small version.

GSO 8" f/8 RC OTA, ZWO ASI294MC Pro cooled color CMOS camera, 120gain, -15ºC, IDAS DTD light pollution filter, Losmandy GM811G mount, ZWO EAF autofocuser, Askar off-axis guider, ZWO ASI174MM Mini guide camera, ZWO ASIAir Plus controller. Processed in Astro Pixel Processor, Lightroom, Photoshop.

#hubblespacetelescope #astrophotography Maybe a boring picture, but perhaps less so when you realize the bright streak is the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in an image taken through my bigger telescope. This wasn't just a coincidence, but carefully planned. HST mostly stays very low in the sky from my latitude when visible at all, but thanks to SkySafari software I knew that there would be a more favorable HST pass that I had the possibility to capture on a mostly clear evening at Yellowwood State Forest.

I wasn't certain how precise the calculations in the software would be, but the location and timing turned out to be dead on as predicted. Kinda like a solar eclipse, you have to be at the right place at the right time, looking in the right direction. In this case, with a field of view of only 41 arcminutes, the precision was important.

The background image was from 4 minutes of exposure, while it took about 3 seconds for HST to cross the field, at about 16º altitude. There are at least three faint galaxies visible in the image, though perhaps not in this small version.

Tech details: GSO 8" f/8 RC OTA, ZWO ASI294MC Pro cooled color CMOS camera, 120gain, -15ºC, IDAS DTD light pollution filter, Losmandy GM811G mount, ZWO EAF autofocuser, Askar off-axis guider, ZWO ASI174MM Mini guide camera, ZWO ASIAir Plus controller. Processed in Astro Pixel Processor, Lightroom, Photoshop.