The Dutch Observatory

Atlantis Goodby!! Frank Garner, Stephen Ramsden, his frien Eric, and I got together to attempt to image the last chance for a solar transit of the ISS with the shuttle Atlantis from our area. A layer of “thin” clouds brought the “astronomical seeing” down to poor. Had to turn up the gamma and the gain way above my normal settings to get a reasonable shutterspeed for a transit image. Here my result. Not  great, but good enough to say “Goodby to Atlantis”.

Tonight, November 20th, was the third night in a row that I observed the ISS when it flew over our area. Jon Wood decided to go to CE and I joined him. I have tried several times to capture the ISS on previous flybys but never managed to get a close up. The star trail images were as close as I got….. until today.

After many failed attempts, finally a closer image.  Exposure is a problem because of the direct reflection of the sun on the Shuttle, but I am pretty happy with the result of this image of the Space Shuttle Endeavour docked on the ISS. Today is also the 10th aniversary of the International Space Station.  And while I took this image, an EVA was in progress and spacewalkers Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper and Shane Kimbrough were working on the starboard solar alpha rotary joint. Click on the image below for a larger picture, or Click here for a short movie with all 31 images of the flyby.