International Space Station

The last Space Shuttle mission to the ISS attached more solar panels to increase the electrical power available on the ISS. This had the effect of increasing the brightness of the Station as seen from the Earth, thus last night's pass was billed as the brightest ever over Northern Ireland at magnitude -2.0.

Rather than photograph this as the conventional time exposure giving a streak across the sky, I thought I'd try and get a single still image through my telescope. The plan was to set the camera on the scope, pre-focused, then set it running on continuous drive while trying to keep the ISS in the finderscope. Most of the frames were blank of course, but a few weren't and this was the best one..



It's a bit overexposed but the concept seems to be sound. I shall have another go and of course if tonight's launch of Endeavour goes ahead there will be a Shuttle to aim at as well, then the pair of them will be docked for a few nights!