Filming SpaceX DM-2 Crew Dragon Docked to ISS

Go get 'em Doc!

That is crazy man! when do they depart back to earth?

They're aiming for August the last I heard.

Thanks it will be a great accomplishment!

Any upcoming comets that can be seen from Washington DC area ?
Your equipment rocks, great videos !!!

Awesome !

Astro, since you are paying attention now, I'd like to ask a technical question:

Why can't someone use mega cheap lenses to build a very large refractor telescope?

I can get a magnifier for electronic circuits that is beyond crystal clear, I mean this thing is SO CLEAR it is stunning. Obviously the lens is not crap. I can get it in a focal length of about 1000 mm also. It is approximately 160 MM in diameter. It is convex.

Why can't that work along with another equal quality (but smaller) magnifier lens for the secondary lens?

Maybe it would only hit 10X but what then happens when you take all that light and ram it into a P-1000?

Why are there not a plethora of cheap but enormous refracting telescopes that use the concept of get it done cheap? I am talking $50 for light magnification that would be phenomonal, then just use the camera to take it the rest of the way. A P-1000 at 3000 mmX 10 would be 30,000 mm, right? So who cares about quality if you at least see something new.

The ED elements in the P-1000 would do a marvelous job with killing fringing, as would the intelligent software in that camera, that is specifically designed to guess what should be there minus the fringing. Why on earth would this not work?

That's an aircraft carrier from 5000 feet taken with a cheap camera phone..you guys believe anything

I mean you can get a pretty cheap achromatic refractor, but anything with that few lens elements in it is going to have pretty severe color fringing on bright targets. I have an 80mm diameter achromat then I picked up for about a hundred bucks. Long focal length is desirable from the perspective of trying to minimize chromatic aberration, but not so desirable for a lot of other considerations. The longer the focal length, the more demanding the tracking accuracy and the slower the photographic speed of the system.

Depends on what your planning to do with it of course, but I mostly grab my refractor for doing wide-angle shots. Chromatic aberration becomes a moot point when doing narrow band imaging, or when doing hydrogen alpha solar imaging. You could pair it with a Quark eyepiece and have a pretty nice solar telescope, but the latter is going to be pretty expensive on its own.

You want to make a P1000 even higher in focal length? I have a buddy who uses a p1000 along with my tracking software for filming launches and I can tell you right now it's a very rare day that he feels bold enough to even use the p1000 at its existing maximum magnification. It's extremely demanding and has an extremely small field of view as it is. And he's using a motorized mount to robotically control the pointing of the camera. With my telescope I do film at a higher magnification than he does, but the entire setup is orders of magnitude larger and sturdier.

How come I can take a clear picture of the moon which is allegedly a couple hundred thousand miles away but your pics of the ISS at 400 kms elevation are always grainy?

Did they take the EMP with them this time?

the moon is 3400km wide at 384000 km distance
the ISS is 110m wide at 400 km distance

my dumb brain would tell you to do the math
obviously it's much easier to get a clear picture of the moon than the ISS

Thanks Einstein.

Moon and ISS, notice the angular size difference...

If you can take a clearer picture of ISS I'll be impressed.

Well, if all I have to worry about is chromatic abberation (which I can do a LOT to fix with just the color options in The Gimp, I think I might be interested in doing that mega cheap telescope.

For "sturdy" all you need is a concrete forming tube from Home Depot. Get one the size of the lens in front, make the back for it, (I have tons of tools right down to micrometers, etc) so I can do pretty good precision, I'd get it right, and then make it all stable by approximating a dobsonian mount where the camera is actually hard fixed to the entire telescope. It ought to work. I had no idea short focal lengths were worse for CA though, that's a great tip.

Stop posting aircraft carriers in the ocean, you can see the f16s on deck ready to take off..water looks like space if you take it from above

I just want something cheap and dirty.

OMG that's Saturn, not the ISIS!!! This is Saturday night live!!

I'll translate that. Since publicly available images of everything out there are readily available, all I want is a scope powerful enough to call B.S. or confirm anything the gov says. It only has to confirm, it does not need to be pretty.

Where do you people come up with this stuff?

Standing by for some more fake CGI bullshit.

Even with CGI, we can’t get a clear shot?

Sup with that?

Iss is fake!!!!!

I take it that the white triangular object at the bottom of the station is the capsule?

Yup.