The Dutch Observatory

Frank Garner, Stephen Ramsden and I went last night to Charlie Elliott for another ISS/Shuttle session. I made two Clips. The first one while the duo was ascending, the second when it descended in the sky on the way to SSE. I stacked a few frames and sharpened them a little. Here two images of probably my last chance to image the final mission of STS132 Atlantis while docked on the ISS. Since the crew was woken up around 2:30 ET, the crew was asleep while these images were taken.

We went to CE tonight and witnessed a strange phenomenan. As it was still light, Frank and I were looking at what we first thought was Mars. but it was almost as bright as Venus, as Frank, who was looking through his scope, detected a pendulum below it that seemed to go from horizontal down and up again to horizontal and back again. I hurried up to try to make an image of it…, but was too late as we saw it explode, Frank in the eye piece and I with the naked eye. Frank was still following it as it came down until it was not recognizable anymore in the sky. wonder what this was…..