Tiangong-2 Lunar Transit 2017.04.04

Blink and you'll miss it. Tiangong-2, the temporary Chinese space station launched in September 2016, crossed between the Moon and myself on April 4th, 2017 at 8:56:19.31 PM.

It was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye even though it's only about the size of a single International Space Station module. It's angular size was 12 times smaller than the best ISS transits I've witnessed.

So, to make sure the tiny station showed up on video I took a chance imaging with a 2x Barlow lens. This doubles the image size, but also halves the brightness. In photography terms, my telescope was functioning as a 3,000mm, f/20 lens. As a result, a messy ISO setting was needed to maintain a high shutter speed on my wimpy camera.

The reality is that the focal ratio of my 6-inch scope isn't ideal for this type of thing. It was a fun experiment, though, and very cool to watch the pass through binoculars.

Transit duration: 0.54s (Roughly 0.33s across the video field of view)
Altitude above horizon: 65.2°
Azimuth: 200.8°
Satellite altitude: 234mi/377km
Distance to satellite: 257mi/413km
Angular diameter: 5.4 arcseconds
Moon: 64% illuminated

Celestron C6, 2x Barlow, Sony Nex-5t

AVCHD 1080p/60fps, 1/400s, ISO 1600, processed in iMovie

Diagrams and maps from CalSky

[cudanvidiadeveloper]

I user LX200 to view Tiangong, but not see. What is you telescope? Thanks!

[cudanvidiadeveloper]

hello, how can you know which satellite is flying through the moon? Thanks!