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What if you could image from the ISS?

DSLR Acquisition Deep Sky ISS
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John Hayes avatar
John Hayes avatar
Here's a question:  If you could set up your own equipment on the ISS to image something that has never been imaged, what would you pick and how would you do it?

It turns out that this isn't just a hypothetical question.  I know one of the ISS astronauts who has just been assigned his next flight in a year and a half.  He loves to figure out how to do experiments and image things that can't be done on earth and he sent me a note this morning looking for suggestions.  He has already taken maybe 50,000 images of our planet and its atmosphere so he has turned to the sun and other objects in the sky to see what might be possible.  He has a few ideas that sound intriguing and we've discussed some of those but I don't want to leave any stone unturned.  The parameters are that he is going to do this project on his own time with (mostly) his own gear so he can't take something like a C14 with him!  In general, the imaging system will be a Nikon DSLR (already on the ISS) with any lens you can imagine.  He can take a small tracker (that he buys or builds).  The best candidates are relatively bright objects (or phenomenon) using wavelengths that don't penetrate the atmosphere.   Clouds and seeing won't be a problem but spacecraft motion will be.  Conceptually, this is the opposite of JWST, but nevertheless a surprising amount of science can be done even with simple equipment!

Let me know if you have any ideas and I'll sort through them and pass along the best ones.  Hopefully we can crowd-source something that might be scientifically interesting.

John
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Björn Arnold avatar
Björn Arnold avatar
Hi John, 

Interesting question and I think I cannot come up with a good idea but I‘d like to give feedback about some thoughts I weighed and maybe to trigger a discussion leading to an idea:

I think the image scale wouldn’t be in a range where the missing seeing would make a big difference.
The spectral sensitivity of the DSLR is probably the regular „stock“ sensitivity? For that, I‘m not aware of wavelengths where our atmosphere isn’t transparent. So in short, I think it wouldn’t make things visible which couldn’t be made visible with earthbound observation.

What I am wondering however is if he could make use of parallax effects, because within 45 minutes the ISS will make a perspective change of about 13.000km?
What if he‘d image the moon (during full moon for example) and use the different perspectives to make a stereoscopic image?

Björn
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John Hayes avatar
John Hayes avatar
Bjorn,
That’s an interesting idea.  I believe that there are modified cameras available.  The last time that I saw him he told me that he was ordering a cooled astro-camera for some solar work and that camera may also be available.   Regardless, we are talking about a silicon based sensor and refractive optics so that will define the optical bandpass.  As I recall, there is a C8 on the station so that might also be available.

John
gfunkernator avatar
gfunkernator avatar
Isn't the ISS moving far too quickly to image anything dim that requires long exposures?  For example if a camera on the ISS points away from Earth, opens the shutter for 1 second, you would see star streaks right?
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John Hayes avatar
John Hayes avatar
Isn't the ISS moving far too quickly to image anything dim that requires long exposures?  For example if a camera on the ISS points away from Earth, opens the shutter for 1 second, you would see star streaks right?

Not with a properly configured tracker using relatively short exposures.  Some projects have even benefited from the motion.  Doing a 20+ hour exposure of a DSO might be really tough so this concept requires a bit of thinking outside the box.

John
Björn Arnold avatar
Björn Arnold avatar
I am wondering: is the ISS actually rotating or stabilized by gyros?

Actually, wouldn’t it be interesting to have the „telescope“ free floating within the inertial system of the ISS and look how the scope could be stabilized? (Just a spontaneous thought crossing my mind)
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John Hayes avatar
John Hayes avatar
Bjorn,
I believe that the station rotates once per orbit so that its antennas are always pointed at the Earth.  As I recall, that's a rotation rate of about 4 deg/min so it needs a fast tracker to stabilize a camera to the distant stars.

John
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Björn Arnold avatar
Björn Arnold avatar
Just a point that crossed my mind regarding imaging in general:
He would have to image through windows. Besides I am wondering if their transmission characteristics is different, I would guess that he would have reflections in the window. Probably absolute darkness could be difficult to achieve? 
Of course this fact has been the case all the time but if your object is fairly bright (Earth), the effect could be negligible compared to long exposures.

Björn
Björn Arnold avatar
Björn Arnold avatar
I just thought that it well may be the case that this is not the first time someone had the idea, so I did a very quick web search:
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/stargazing-from-the-international-space-station

Please check out the description to the image. The way I read it is that this was all captured there from the ISS!?

Björn

EDIT: another image https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4676689
John Hayes avatar
John Hayes avatar
Yes, indeed there have been a LOT of images taken from the ISS.  As I said in my original post, they guy who asked the question has taken probably 50,000 images from the ISS of all kinds of subjects ranging from the earth, the atmosphere, the sun, and the stars.  He has won multiple APODs, and his images have been on the cover of a lot of magazines.   This latest project is to expand on the imaging work that he's already done with the idea that the project should be something that can't easily be done from Earth.

The windows in the Cupala are fused silica and you can read more about it here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupola_(ISS_module)#Specifications.

John
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Steven avatar
Steven avatar
given that the ISS blasts through space at high speeds, I don't see a "point" in shooting things from the ISS.
It's not like you can polar align properly.. not sure if you can track properly.. given there are completely different planes of rotation..
You're also dealing with light pollution of the sun that's… always there.. with the exception of the xx minutes on the dark side of the planet.. which happens every 90 minutes.. As soon as that hits the scope, you're done. Then you still have the glow from the planet.. same thing..

Next are the windows.. you're having to deal with that.. it's not like you can go "outside" to set up.

I often shoot regular pics from an airplane cockpit window, at 400mm. And the image gets impacted massively because of the layers of the glass and bits.. it distorts the image enough to be noticeable. it's probably(??) going to be quite similar in the ISS.. You're also probably dealing with reflections in the windows. - So.. I'm not sure if a massive C14 would be of any use.

I sometimes try some astrophotography from the airplane cockpit. But it's very limiting because of the movement of the plane..  milky way shots at best. Maybe a quick Orion shot. Usually 14mm lens. As anything about 50mm.. doesn't work because of the movement of the plane. Granted, the ISS probably moves a little more predictably, but, also.. 35 times as fast.

I'm not quite sure what I would shoot, given that there are 2 massive space telescopes "nearby"… 
how much science can you really get with a little Nikon that "beats" those billion dollar scopes.

But, if I'm up in the ISS. I'd probably be far more busy looking down, not up.
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John Hayes avatar
John Hayes avatar
given that the ISS blasts through space at high speeds, I don't see a "point" in shooting things from the ISS.
It's not like you can polar align properly.. not sure if you can track properly.. given there are completely different planes of rotation..
You're also dealing with light pollution of the sun that's... always there.. with the exception of the xx minutes on the dark side of the planet.. which happens every 90 minutes.. As soon as that hits the scope, you're done. Then you still have the glow from the planet.. same thing..

Next are the windows.. you're having to deal with that.. it's not like you can go "outside" to set up.

I often shoot regular pics from an airplane cockpit window, at 400mm. And the image gets impacted massively because of the layers of the glass and bits.. it distorts the image enough to be noticeable. it's probably(??) going to be quite similar in the ISS.. You're also probably dealing with reflections in the windows. - So.. I'm not sure if a massive C14 would be of any use.

I sometimes try some astrophotography from the airplane cockpit. But it's very limiting because of the movement of the plane..  milky way shots at best. Maybe a quick Orion shot. Usually 14mm lens. As anything about 50mm.. doesn't work because of the movement of the plane. Granted, the ISS probably moves a little more predictably, but, also.. 35 times as fast.

I'm not quite sure what I would shoot, given that there are 2 massive space telescopes "nearby"... 
how much science can you really get with a little Nikon that "beats" those billion dollar scopes.

But, if I'm up in the ISS. I'd probably be far more busy looking down, not up.

I've already explained a little about what has been done and why this is a potential valuable exercise so I don't want to get into a back and forth over whether an imaging project is worth doing from the ISS.  If he can pull it off, I suspect that you will be surprised by one of the projects that my astronaut buddy has in mind--and its something that can actually be done without resorting to a space telescope that's restricted to a pretty small FOV.  The question is not HOW you would image something.  The question is WHAT would you image?   If the idea is good enough, the question of HOW comes next--and that's what I'll leave up to my buddy.  He is pretty clever and a number of his private-time projects have produced significant discoveries along with numerous scientific papers.

One last thing:  Perhaps you are not appreciating the fact that the Cupola is designed specifically for making external observations--unlike the windows on an airplane.  I love looking at the sky when I'm at FL410 on a moonless night in my airplane, but the lights in the cockpit (from the MFD and PFDs) and the optical quality of the windows isn't good enough to allow imaging from the cockpit--like at all.

John
Chris White- Overcast Observatory avatar
Chris White- Overcast Observatory avatar
John,

Interesting proposition.  If it were me I'd image really wide FOV.  We have this curved effect that the atmosphere creates which distorts the perspective.  I'm not talking about field curvature, which you would also deal with in space, but the actual refraction of the atmosphere.  I think it would be really interesting to see large FOV without this effect.   You could image large nebula's in their "natural environment" and the Milky Way itself. 

It would be interesting to see how dramatically undersampled images would look without the seeing blur, and this leads me to wonder just how large you could drizzle an image.  Could make for a really fun exercise to have data like this.  Throughout the course of a year you could essentially mosaic space as seen from our location in the heavens.  I like the idea of wide FOV and trying to put some context on where we are without the lens of the atmosphere confirming our biased view and perspective.

Not to get into the weeds of how to execute this, but the wider the view, the simpler it will be to account for platform rotation, etc…
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John Hayes avatar
John Hayes avatar
Chris,
I think that you are on the right track.  Ideally, it would be most useful to couple a wide field system to observing something from space that is extraordinarily difficult to observe from Earth.  I haven’t calculated it but I suspect that atmospheric distortion is small compared to the optical distortion present in most wide field imaging systems.

I’m personally wondering if a near-UV imaging system could image very high atmospheric interaction of the atmosphere with the solar wind in a way that might make it possible to visualize the Earth’s magnetic field from a new perspective.  There may also be similar effects that could be observed on other planets but I’m not aware of what could be imaged.  Finally, I wonder if observing meteors from above in different wavelengths might reveal something new about the high atmosphere.  I don’t know…I’m just spitballing.


John
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Chris White- Overcast Observatory avatar
Chris White- Overcast Observatory avatar
You're thinking outside the box. They're some pretty cool ideas. I assume your friend will be on deployment for quite a while and needs to have a plan for which items to bring. I don't think fedex does overnight to ISS?

I hope you circle back to this thread to share or link to his work after he returns.
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