Awesome Shuttle/ISS pass tonight

koputai (Jason) · #1 20-02-2010, 10:19 PM

I just happened to be outside with the missus tonight, and we'd spotted a three or four satellites, with me saying "There's one", "there's one", when Amanda pipes up with "There's two!".
They were both very bright, about 3 - 5 degrees apart, the trailing one a bit brighter than the other. I've seen this before, and it is always amazing to see one chasing the other across the sky. We first noticed them low in the west, and they travelled across above the moon, straight through the Plieades, and dissapeared one then the other as the sun set on them in the north. The time was about 8:30pm.
I haven't checked Heavens-above yet, but it HAD to be the shuttle and ISS.

Cheers,
Jason.

StephenM (Stephen) · #2 20-02-2010, 10:31 PM

Hi Jason,

It was the shuttle closely followed by the ISS. I had hoped to photograph them from Brisbane, but we had almost complete cloud cover at the time. Only got a couple of short glimpses of the pair through gaps in the cloud. First time I've seen a double pass, and it was spectacular.
Hopefully we'll get another opportunity without clouds before they retire the shuttle.

Cheers,
Stephen

Outbackmanyep · #3 22-02-2010, 01:11 PM

Hi Guys!
I saw this from Armidale Observatory with a few members and visitors while i was showing them how to use their telescopes, it was 8:45pm exactly when they passed over the moon as seen from Armidale.

AWESOME!

It was my first sighting of them two together!

SkyViking (Rolf) · #4 22-02-2010, 02:31 PM

I saw them together trailing each other once, while they were venting something out in space. It looked like one of them had a curved comet tail, absolutely spectacular.