For those who are interested, I've scanned in the June '04 Sky & Telescope article relating to ISS Transit:
SkyAndTelescope-IssTransit-Jun04-a.gif    1392x1934, 551 KB
SkyAndTelescope-IssTransit-Jun04-b.gif     928x1289, 263 KB

See www.satobs.org/seesat/Apr-2004/0003.html for more information.

The sleeve from an eyepiece was attached to the camera using putty epoxy:

Fitted to my 10" Meade Schmidt / Newtonian:

I have a FireWire card for the laptop; however, the laptop's not fast enough to capture at the 30 fps that the camera is capable of (mono and YUV 4:1:1 modes).  On the other hand, my 22" Mitsubishi monitor isn't very portable, nor very frugle of electricity... solution?

I use the "Remote Desktop Connection" feature of Windows XP Professional effectively to use the laptop as an LCD flat panel display for the Dell minitower.  Video is compressed (to 16-bit color) and pumped across the yellow Ethernet "crossover" cable, and keyboard and mouse (from the laptop) is pumped back, to control the Dell.

For my next trick, I'll measure the power used by the Dell, to see if I can run it from my car battery & 300-watt Tripp-Lite inverter.

28 May update: I bought a pack of two 1-ohm, 10-watt resistors from Radio Shack and wired them in parallel to make a 1/2-ohm, 20-watt resistor, which I then soldered into an extension cord.  By measuring the AC voltage drop across it, I was able to determine that my Pentium 4 draws about 48 watts while "idling."  On start-up, as the hard drive is spinning up, etc., it appears to peak at around 100 watts.

So I connected the lawn mower battery (in the photo below) to my inverter, and booted the Dell with no problem; the peak current appeared to be perhaps 25% higher (around 1 amp, versus 800 mA) when booting from the inverter, which suggests that the inverter was putting out somewhat less than the 120 volts of house current.

The AVI from the camera could not be opened by Registax or K3CCDTools, however.  After e-mailing Cor Berrevoets (Registax), he suggested trying VirtualDub^ to convert my AVIs to  "old style" AVIs (evidently, the "new style" is some digital video- Divx?- format).  VirtualDub successfully converted it, producing a file that was about 50% larger, that Registax was indeed able to read.

Now all I have to do is learn how to actually use Registax  ;-)

The power unit for the webcam wasn't actually necessary- power is supplied from the FireWire card in the Dell (the power unit is needed when operating the webcam from the laptop, however).

A keyboard is needed for the Dell for startup & shutdown.

Ready to rock 'n roll!

Below, a photo taken with my Kodak DC290 digital camera of the IBM ThinkPad's display, which is really displaying video from the Dell!  The telescope is focused on Venus.

Another DC290 photo of the laptop's display, zoomed to show the webcam preview window.  (I could have used SnagIt, I suppose, to make a direct screen capture, which would have had better resolution.)

On to Jupiter!

Zoomed in on the webcam preview window (I never changed the DC290's clock to Daylight Saving Time, so it's an hour behind.)

Here's a frame, grabbed in JPEG form from the Jupiter AVI using Microsoft Movie Maker: