1/16/09 APOD- A Wonder

I sent this as an email to brother Pat earlier with the above 

title as subject line. He asked me to 

post it here at TA-

A brief respite from the headline news today (although

the US Airways rescue story is very cool)...

Looks like Kyran Mish & son might have new heights to

aspire to in their night sky photography. Kidding aside, an 

amazing shot recorded from a small Earth telescope:

"Remarkable details are visible in this view of the
orbiting International Space Station (ISS), recorded
with a small telescope on planet Earth through a clear
twilight sky. Seen on December 27th at about 75
degrees elevation and some 350 kilometers above the
planet's surface, parts of the station, including the
Kibo and Columbus science modules, even seem to
reflect the Earth's lovely bluish colors..."
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090116.html

- Maureen Lang

Comments

[Cieran]

Maureen:

Thanks for the wonderful picture! It does indeed represent an ingenious use of a small telescope. And you're right, now I'll have to start pointing mine in such directions, as one benefit of life out here on the prairie is that we get unobstructed views of the east and west horizons!

I've lately put up my astrophotography pursuits to concentrate instead on purely visual observation. The sky last night was incredibly clear, but the recent cold fronts have conspired to make it very "jumpy", so images wandered all over the field. Thus there was no point in trying to track such random wanderings with a camera.

Nonetheless, there's much to see with the naked eye, in addition to the great nebulas and clusters of the winter sky. Saturn is especially notable this year, because it's rings are edge-on, as narrow as I've ever seen them. For anyone who is used to watching Saturn in a telescope, it's a very strange (and wonderful) spectacle.

I highly recommend it, though for now, you gotta stay up late to do so.