After a couple of years of work I have finally been able to produce good observations of low Earth satellites with a used DSLR camera and a simple setup. This means that with very inexpensive hardware I can produce observations that others produce with video cameras and more expensive systems. So far I produce only a few observations. The system uses a used Nikon D300s DSLR camera, a 50mm lens, my Mac laptop AND a custom built GPS timer. I also proved that I can do this with a Nikon D200; One advantage of this system is that I can easily carry it around to different locations.
I take photos with the camera (pointed by holding my iPhone against the back of the camera!) and resolve them with Astromety.net and then get RA and Dec from SAO Image DS9, this is a semi-labor intensive process, but it works. I do plan to automate it more.
After trying for a couple of years (I can mostly only take photos in the winter) I found that the key problem was getting precise timing of the photo, so a friend designed and built a custom timer for the shutter. I have confirmed with a friend (David Brierly) that the observations I produce are as good as the ones produced by other equipment. I have tried the shutter timer with other brands of cameras and it works with several. I learned a LOT about camera shutters and clocks in this effort.
So far I have taken photos only of bright satellites (we used the Future Imagery Architecture satellites) but I have gotten photos of other satellites such as the White Cloud naval satellites. Now I am going to expand the list of satellites that I photograph and am going to try a few other lenses. I include a photo of the entire system, one zoomed in on the camera and timer, and a photo of the timer itself.
