The camera is a Supercircuits PC23C B&W security camera ($80), which I have modified to allow manual control of exposure and gain.  The telescope is an 8" Dobsonian-mounted reflector using a homemade negative projection tube with a Televue 3X Barlow, giving an effective focal length of 7200 mm.  A standard VHS VCR records the video during the satellite pass.

All satellite tracking is done manually by following the target in the Telrad viewfinder and pushing the telescope in the right direction.  I don't try to keep the target in the field-of-view all the time (impossible anyway), but rather to sweep the target through the field-of view as many times as possible.  This way the camera's fast shutter speed will capture dozens of `still shots' on the tape.  Later I replay the tape and capture the frames that have good images on them with a Snappy frame grabber and a VCR with a good freeze frame function (I use a Sony SLV-N60).

I try to capture at least 5 consecutive frames (more if possible) and stack them using AstroStack.  Only images recorded within a few seconds of each other can be stacked successfully.  Lighting and angle-of-view change so rapidly as the satellite orbits that images captured too far apart can differ too much to be stacked.  During a 4 minute satellite pass I am usually able to record about 100 - 200 individual frames, but only about 50 are used in the final images.  The only processing I do on the images is to adjust brightness and contrast.  Each of my composite images shows the satellite at different points across the sky - usually the top-left image is the approaching view and the bottom-right is the departing view.  More recently I have been including a 3D computer generated view to help identify individual features in the image.

Nick Gilbert  Phoenix, Az.  NICKG@karsten.com