by BrentR 35 Replies latest social entertainment
I just searched for the brightest satellite passing and got this sky chart, that shows when and where a magnitude 3.0 (pretty bright for a satellite) satellite can be seen moving across the sky:
It really works! I've taken timed exposures of satellites (or space junk) moving across the sky on prior occasions. Here are some examples I took on a very dark night in China:
Cool beans! What type of camera did you use? I will soon be getting a Nikon D70 so I can do a whole lot more then what I can with my HP.
I'm set to see the Space Shuttle in just a few minutes. Will let you know if I do catch a glimpse of it.
Yup, I just saw the Space Shuttle, that was definitely it...thanks to the star map telling me where and when to look, and it even showed where the Space Shuttle would fade out, and indeed it faded out in that exact spot. Plus I got to see a shooting star too. :)
Here is the photo from the space shuttle's pass tonight....not very good because there's so much danged sky glow even at 10pm (thank you light pollution). Anyway, you can see the streak of the space shuttle rising up towards the big dipper on a heading straight towards the north star. Tomorrow I'm going to get out the binoculars and try to see if I can make anything out. Monday night is going to be the best viewing, with a -0.9 magnitude.
Wow, THAT was neat. I just saw both the space station and space shuttle go overhead, the shuttle about 10-15 seconds behind the space station. So the two have already detached but are still in the same orbit. And both are very bright tonight, each about -1.8 in magnitude, about as bright as Siruis. It was kinda thrilling seeing the two of them streaking across in the same path.
Unfortunately, I only got a really lousy blurry photo of the space station, crap.
Okay, I'm getting a little better at taking pics of stars.... Here is my photo of Comet 17P/Holmes that is in the sky right now:
I hope to get a better zoomed in shot tomorrow. Notice the Pleiades (God's throne, lol) in the upper right corner.
Here is the best photo around of the comet, taken by Michael Jager:
Here is tonight's photo of the comet:
I got my good digicam back from getting repaired, so I was able to get a better image than the other day.
bumpety bump bump
