WOW!
As promised, we just watched the International Space Station and an Iridium flare almost intersect in the sky over Denver, and it was an AWESOME sight:
That's Cassiopeia on the right. Here's a closer view, showing just the flare, the ISS, and the star Gamma Cephei:
Full-size image here.
We were very lucky to be able to see the show at all. The weather forecast as of last night called for 50% cloud cover, and when we arrived at our viewing spot 25 minutes before the flare, it looked like a big ugly cloud was headed straight for the spot where the Iridium/ISS encounter was going to happen:
Thankfully, though, the cloud moved off to the east, leaving the area around Cassiopeia, Polaris and Gamma Cephei completely clear.
(By the way, in the cloud photo, the brightest "star" is Jupiter, the other noticably bright star is Antares, and the line at bottom left is not a satellite but an airplane landing at Denver International Airport.)
The Iridium satellite we saw was number 45. We also saw two other satellites: Lacrosse 3 and, I think, SeaSat 1.
Why the streak ? Is the ISS moving fast in relation to earth ? or vice versa ?
Is there air in space ?
Posted by: 4-7 | Oct 5, 2007 10:37:58 PM
The streak represents the motion of the ISS over the course of a 15-second exposure. If you look at the full-size image, you can see that each star is slightly elongated; that elongations represents the rotation of the earth in those same 15 seconds. So the ISS's motion (and the Iridium satellite's motion) is clearly the more significant contributor to the photo. :)
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