Yesterday at 22:30 local time (20:30 UTC), in deep twilight with the sun barely 5 degrees below the horizon, I watched a very fine near-zenith pass of the Space Shuttle Endeavour mission STS-127, launched Wednesday. It was bright, being easily visible against the bright blue sky (where only Vega and Arcturus were readily visible). I estimate it must habe been between mag. -1.5 and -2.5.
I filmed part of the pass with my Canon EOS 450D photo camera tethered to my laptop, using 'EOS Camera Movie Record' software (that software basically taps the live view signal of the camera, enabling to "film" with it). Here is some footage, showing it pass near Vega (in the top of the screen). The original movie file is much better quality than this crappy YouTube version by the way (and Blogspot did not want to upload the video alas):
Exactly how it looked for me at the same time, from Mannheim Germany. I was struck by how much faster it moved compared to the ISS passes (might have been my imagination).
ReplyDeleteIt was noticeably dimmer than the ISS passes the same evening. But still very bright.