Last Shuttle & ISS

[Nico13 (Ken)]

Nothing special or are they?

The wife and I like watch the ISS go over head on those far too few clear night we have down south here and a handy little iPhone app called Solar walk can tell you where it is at any given time of day or night with about thirty seconds notice.
So with the recent last flight of the Shuttle and docking with the ISS we were keen to watch it pass over but had never thought of looking to see if the Shuttle was visible on any previous flights so the night it was due to unhitch from the ISS we went and looked and for some strange reason I thought wouldn't it be nice to get some pictures of it.

Well my longest lens is a 300mm f4, a very nice lens but lacking in the mm end of things but anyway got a pretty good camera stuck on the other end my recently purchased Pentax K5.

So anyway we get out about five minutes before it was due over and it was almost total cloud and so Carol went in disappointed but I stood and watched for a while and a small gap appeared on the down wind leg and I thought just maybe and then it appeared for an ever so short space of time, guessing at a shutter speed I banged off a few shots and it was gone.

Went in and looked at what I had and was surprised to see not one spot on the image but two, the Shuttle had on ly just undocked and was still travelling very close to the ISS.

Well we had one more try at it about ninety minutes later still a lot of cloud but this time I got it almost over head but the separation was much greater.

What you see here is right off the camera but with pixel dimensions doubled twice from 300 per inch to 600 and again to 1200. The shot showing both in the frame is the one I used to enlarge the single images of the Shuttle and the ISS.

Not much to look at but a moment in history and even more remarkable when you realise how they were taken, step 1 go out on veranda and look up step 2 locate target in viewfinder of camera step 3 take pictures.

Hope you like them, I was pretty amazed

Nico

[iceman (Mike)]

Good try Nico! A faster shutter speed would've nailed a bit more detail but a good capture.

Certainly a piece of history.

[von Tom (Tom)]

Well done Nico! You got them both on consecutive orbits with structure detail visible. Very special I say!

Tom

[Nico13 (Ken)]

Thanks guys,
Yeh thought about a bit faster shutter but had such a short amount of time to experiment I stuck with my first choice.
The first pass when they were together after just un-docking it was a long way down range, I reckon about half way to New Zealand so it's a shame i hadn't got it when it was over head for a bit more detail.
I guess it would be a difference in distance of 350 ks over head to almost 1500 or more out low on the way to NZ.
Always fun trying this stuff and you never know what you'll get until you try.

Nico.

[deanm (Dean)]

Try this from sleepy Adelaide:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qeb2ix6HdpA

Dean