Telescope observations of the ISS?

Popoutman

Has anyone else here successfully observed the ISS through a scope?

Last night's best pass was 19.50-55, and I had my 8" Dob set up beside the house. It's a build in progress and it currently has no finder so once I noticed the ISS about ten degrees above the horizon, just popping above and through the smoke from the gorse fires that were around Galway yesterday evening, I sighted along the truss bars and went hunting. Surprisingly enough once I had it in sight it was quickly moving but not that hard to track. I could easily see the structure and colouring of the components as it changed orientation and brightness coming towards the highest point of the pass.
I followed it in the eyepiece until it went to yellow, then to red, then to quite dim. However, instead of it disappearing after its local sunset I could follow it for another minute or so into the night. It appeared about magnitude 8 or 9 as I followed it. Maybe I was seeing either the illumination from the high atmosphere around the edge of the Earth, or I was looking at the interior lights.

I was really surprised to see that much structure through the eyepiece at 35x. I can remember when Mir was up I looked at it with the 8" GEM that I had at the time, and I could see hints of structure then at 50x.

Apparently if you have a recent Meade LX telescope, you can track satellites if you have the up to date TLE descriptions, and you can get the scope to track the satellites. It's hard to get it right but people have had success with it and people have got good webcam captures as well.

Anyone else ever take a look either manually or by computer control?

redman

I haven't yet but this was interesting too:
http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=6710