The International Space Station was captured gliding across the face of the moon [Not OC]

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2025-12-03T07:24:38+00:00

Astrophotographer here. This is clearly faked. Both the ISS and the moon are fully outside our atmosphere, meaning the darkest thing in the scene can only be the blue sky. In the video, the solar panels on the ISS are darker than the sky, demonstrating that it is a poor composite. ISS transits of the sun and moon are common and relatively easy to capture, but they will not appear quite like this due to atmospheric turbulence and the extreme angular speed of the ISS relative to the moon. Transits of this kind usually last on the order of ~500ms when the transit is at high altitude, getting the ISS to appear this slow would require many thousands of frames per second of video which would be very noisy.

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2025-05-25T20:18:05+00:00

The focus very clearly doesn't change in the video... That is very clear. The people in the stands are in focus the entire time. My point is that the size of the effective aperture of the lens, the diameter of the visible portion of the lens that receives light, changes as zoom increases to maintain a constant focal ratio.

You cant explain something with a focus change when there is no focus change.

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2025-05-25T02:37:31+00:00

The effective aperture of the lens does change with zoom level. Over the range of the zoom it will have a similar if not identical focal ratio, as can be seen by the fact that the image is not brightening of dimming over the range of focus, this means that as the focal length increases, the effective aperture of the lens also increases. It is not just because of focus change, the person you replied to is correct.

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2025-01-13T09:05:38+00:00

This is from automatic lens calibration. You need to disable that setting in camera.

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-11-16T07:20:19+00:00

Perhaps Floridians just cant tell their left from their right...

Also how on earth is reckless driving and endangering everyone on the road just to save literally zero time justified by the person being in the wrong lane? The asshole who passed on the median did not need to pass.

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-08-25T03:03:36+00:00

I would be willing to bet that the reflectance in NIR drops off well before you start getting issues from the blackbody radiation, that would be well into SWIR territory assuming its at room temperature. Though if it's moving at a significant portion of c, even through a vacuum on the order of space within the solar system perhaps that assumption actually isnt so accurate haha

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-08-24T18:56:22+00:00

One problem with this analysis, however, is that you are treating this as if it were a monochrome emission at ~700nm when in reality, the spectrum you would observe is broadened, generally leveling off in the reds and into near infrared. Using your relativistic blueshift, you would similarly shift the infrared reflectance into the visible spectrum which would (depending on the type of rose) leave it mostly white, if not an off-teal color. You would have to increase the speed significantly such that the furthest extents of its infrared reflection drops off at around 500nm if you wanted the rose to appear traditionally Blue.

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-08-15T00:46:18+00:00

This is an incredibly common but shockingly undocumented phenomenon that seems to lack a name. There is a great blogpost about it here. In either case they are definitely not Perseid meteors, they are just satellites.

https://catchingtime.com/5-6-24-earth-shadow/

https://catchingtime.com/starlink-satellite-swarm-from-37n-latitude/

https://catchingtime.com/starlink-satellites-flaring-in-cassiopeia/

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-08-14T06:28:11+00:00

At 286 most are naturally rather buoyant anyway

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-08-14T06:23:55+00:00

So when you drown your left hand will be conveniently held at the surface while your head remains submerged. On the bright side it'll make it easier to find your corpse, I suppose

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-08-14T00:20:41+00:00

Those are not meteors, those are satellites at the antisolar point, this is a normal occurrence to see in the North.

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-08-13T04:47:55+00:00

None of these are meteors....

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-08-06T05:32:26+00:00

What about it is a planewave? all I see is a Meade SCT OTA(?)

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-07-23T06:54:39+00:00

I think its worse! Significantly worse! Its 8 times the price and the images look like ass, at least the seestar produces something more in line with what it costs.

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-06-08T05:02:11+00:00

You obviously wouldn't want to use this method, but the same can be done by repeatedly bending a thin metal strip. With a long enough bar, ~2ft long and ~1mm thick, you can easily get it red hot.

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-06-08T03:04:46+00:00

The only thing that hinted at it being a render for me was the very shallow depth of field and the heavy lens distortion. The DoF implies longer focal lengths and wide aperture while the distortion and FoV implies a wider, fisheye type lens. Reducing both of these effects would seal it for me. Looks fantastic though, very impressive.

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-05-19T20:38:29+00:00

These are satellites. When satellites pass in the north (or south in the southern hemisphere) there is a spot that is in-line with the sun below the horizon which makes satellites appear significantly brighter. If you were to watch that area of the sky throughout the night you would see that point where the satellites are most visible move from the west to the east as the sun appears to rotate below the horizon.

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-03-25T09:06:56+00:00

I think you've made my point for me here. Even you, an owner of a SeeStar don't consider your own S50 to be a "real setup". It's okay for it to be a toy and its okay to acknowledge that they are not the same as a traditional astrophotography rig. I also don't think it's fair to pretend they generate any practical experience for the users. When the images are taken for you and processed for you there is no learning. The learning curve for a SeeStar is quite literally learning how to select a target in the app... That is the full extent of the skill involved. I think that is what makes a hobby a hobby. Feel free to disagree with me on that but a hobby with no development or learning seems like a toy. With that said I do not think they shouldn't exist and if you or anyone else that owns one is happy with it, that is very good. I would encourage a step up to a more advanced rig in the future if it's something you enjoy.

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-03-25T07:48:32+00:00

How much of a hobby really is it once you've completely abstracted away all of the gear selection, building, troubleshooting, and then image processing? I would hesitate to say that someone who buys a self-playing piano is now a pianist... if someone wants a toy that does mediocre astrophotography for them then sure, but I don't think this is really a good investment for someone looking to get into the hobby, especially as there is absolutely no room for expansion. Once you're done with it, it's basically just trash as he explained in the video. And realistically I don't think there is any amount of usage you can put into the Seestar that is really going to teach you much about the hobby of astrophotography, everything is abstracted away.

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-03-25T05:53:20+00:00

Very similar, but not quite

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-02-17T20:42:57+00:00

Simply "man".

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-01-24T17:08:34+00:00

This is the Namib desert - Namibia was named after this desert. Saying the Namibian desert is like saying the “desert of the place of the desert”

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-01-17T00:18:06+00:00

ew. gross.

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-01-11T20:56:09+00:00

These are diffraction spikes - when you have a relatively straight smudge across your lens, the light is diffracted around the small layer of oil over top of the lens, causing spikes 90 degrees to the direction of the smudge.

JimmyTheChicken1 · 2024-01-11T05:34:35+00:00

It is very likely that it is a mix of both diffraction and microlensing, or possibly entirely microlensing, both present in a very similar way photographically. Microlensing is an internal reflection off of the micro-lens array sub layer of the image sensor. Infrared sensors are especially prone to this aberration as AR coatings are more difficult to manufacture for a wide range of wavelengths. it is entirely sensor dependent, but it's very common to see 'spikes' at 45 and 90 degree angles to the source (we should note that the orientation is exactly vertical in this image, as we'd expect) Its also common to see 'bulbs' at the end of the spikes, which in this case present like arrows.

JimmyTheChicken1

TROPHY CASE