Tonight I stayed home to image from the Courtyard of my townhome. It was a much brighter ISS pass than last night, so I thought I could catch it without going out to a dark site.
I caught an interesting photo of the ISS. You can see it as the bright streak on the left. On the right you see a series of pairs of "stars" connected by a very thin streak. This is a plane that happened to fly through my image.
Now for the challenge. Click the image to embiggen. Look closely between the plane and the ISS for a thin streak heading down to the left right. After checking Heavens Above, I believe this may be the Cosmos 1666 rocket (I could see it visibly, but it was tougher to catch with the camera). Look closely and you will see the Milky Way starting to poke through the image. Several star clusters are visible. After seeing that, I wish I drove out to the park to catch this from a slightly darker site.
Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.
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3 comments:
When I enlarge the picture, I see a thin streak between the two headed UP to the left. Have I discovered a new satellite?
I see the double dot line of the plane. That makes that picture very cool. It shows the difference between the space station and the blinking you see with a plane. To me, the ISS just looks smoother, like it is gliding across the sky.
I don't see the third line? Maybe I need to clean my screen again? Orbs if you are seeing more satellites than hale, maybe you do too? ;>
No, what Orbs has discovered is that I can't tell left from right! I should have written down to the right(which is the same as up to the left...the satellite was moving down to the right, but there is no way to tell which way it was moving from a still picture). My original draft said it was moving SSW, but the problem is that you have no way of knowing which way is SSW unless you know when and where the picture was taken and then identify the constellations (Saggitarius and Scorpius are easily visible...the bright orange star is Antares,the heart of Scorpius the Scorpion).
kk, click to enlarge the pic and zoom in as far as you can. The second satellite is pretty faint. I upped the camera to ISO 800 for that shot (I thought if if went to 1600, it would overexpose the background from the light pollution and wash things out too much) and barely got it. I could see it with my eye, so I know where it was and that's where it turned up on the pic.
When I get directions, I always ask for turn north instead of turn left.
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