ISS transiting the Sun

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Yesterday (June 23, 2014) near 16:15:29 UT (18:15:29 CEST), the International Space Station (ISS) passed in front of the solar disc as seen from my observing location in downtown Leiden. As can be seen in the picture above, the transit was nearly central (the calculated central line was 600 meter to the north of me). The whole event had a duration of about 1.5 seconds, during which 9 photographs captured the Space Station silhoueted against the sun. The images were made with my Canon EOS 60D through my Celestron C6 (15 cm Schmidt-Cassegrain), fitted with a Solar Screen filter and an F/6.3 focal reducer. The sun was low in the sky at an elevation of 31.8 degrees due West. The inset is a stack of the 5 best ISS silhouets.

The images are not perfectly sharp, which is due to air turbulence (even at 1/4000 second) and the simple fact that I find it quite hard to focus the telescope properly on the sun, certainly when it is almost featureless. Nevertheless, I am satisfied with this image.

I knew of the transit because I subscribe to alerts from CalSky for this kind of phenomena. In preparation for the actual observation, I download the latest ISS elements from Space-Track a few hours before the event, and load them into Guide to fine-tune the transit time and the path over the solar (or lunar) disc. Starting about 1 second before the calculated commencement of the transit, I start a rapid burst series of images at 5.7 images/second.

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Above are two pictures of the setup used. The filter mount is homebrew and quite simple (from thin cartboard). The filter itself is Solar Screen, a mylar filter with a double thin aluminium filter coating. Using such a filter makes it safe to look at the sun (NEVER look at the sun without a proper filter!).

In order to be able to see anything on the camera LCD screen in the bright sunlight, I put a towel over my head and the telescope back during focussing.

Telescopically imaging the ISS (plus some deep-sky)

So far, my satellite imaging has always been done with a DSLR and normal camera lenses and were essentially 'wide field'. The largest focal length I so far used was 180 mm.

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Last week I have experimented with telescopic imaging of the International Space Station (ISS), using my Celestron C6 (15 cm F/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain). Above is the best image, shot 6 June 2014 at 22:07:13 UT as the ISS was zipping past beta Bootes. It is a single image from the series, taken at 1/4000th second at ISO 800.

I kept it simple: I did not actively track the ISS, but looked for points where it passed close to a reasonably bright star, and then pointed the telescope to that position. As the ISS passed that point, I did a rapid burst series of images, a few of them which then showed the ISS zipping through the field. I used 1/4000th second exposures.

That technique is actually enough to get some decent pictures. Later, I will probably experiment with active tracking using computer guidance of the mount, and see whether video might yield more that photography (one drawback of video is a lower resolution, so a need to work with Barlows).

Having the telescope out anyway, I made some deep-sky images too the last two nights, of some bright summer sky icons. Again, I kept it simple. As I work from a town center, and a location where I cannot see the Pole star due to obstruction by a building (which hampers telescope alignment), I kept exposure times short, to 10-15 seconds. Then I stacked large numbers of images.

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The above image of M27, the Dumbbell nebula, a planetary nebula in Vulpecula, is my favourite. It is a stack of 57 images of 15 seconds exposure each at 2000 ISO. The faintest stars on this image are near mag. +16.8, which is not bad with short exposures from a town center.

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Another iconic planetary nebula in the summer sky is M57, the Ring nebula in Lyra. The image is on the same scale as that of M27 above. This image is the result of stacking 60 images of 10 seconds exposure (the scope didn't track that well that night) at 1600 ISO.

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The final image shows globular cluster M13 in Hercules. It is a stack of 57 images of 15 seconds exposure, taken at 2000 ISO.

[UPDATED & CORRECTED] Observing the SpaceX Dragon CRS-3, the ISS and two pieces of Dragon launch debris

CORRECTION (21/04/2014 12:55 UT): in the initial post, the two debris pieces were misidentified. "2014-022C" turned out to be 2014-022H, and "2014-022H" turned out to be 2014-022G.

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Last Friday at 19:25 UT, SpaceX launched the Dragon CRS-3 commercial supply ship to the International Space Station ISS. It passed over Europe 20 minutes later but unfortunately I was clouded out in Leiden. In the middle and eastern parts of the Netherlands as well as elsewhere in Europe, observers were treated to a spectacular view of the Dragon, the Falcon upper stage, and two faint pieces of debris passing by as a thight group of objects.

SpaceX Dragon CRS-3
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I was more lucky yesterday when the sky was clear and the Dragon and ISS made a late twilight pass culminating at approximately 26 degrees altitude in the SW near 20:06 UT (22:06 local time, sun at -12 deg.). The image above shows the Dragon CRS-3 due south already somewhat past culmination. It was easy to see with the naked eye, attaining magn. +1.5. Its brightness is more similar to a Progress or ATV then to the much fainter commercial Orbital Sciences Cygnus.

The Dragon was about 1m 12s behind the ISS, a visual distance of somewhat over 40 degrees. Pre-observation predictions based on elements a few hours old had put it in front of the ISS, so at first I was wondering whether I missed it. Then, as the ISS was descending towards the SE, I saw it approaching in the SW, chasing the ISS. A very fine sight!

The ISS passing the same sky area as the

earlier image, 1 min earlier

(click image to enlarge)

While I was photographing at the nearby city moat, I had also set up the video in my girlfriend's appartment, and this capture both objects as well: first the ISS, then a minute later the Dragon:




(the display says "GPS BAD" because my GPS time inserter failed to lock on a GPS satellite. I hope it is not broken...)

Apart from the Dragon and the ISS, I observed and photographically imaged a third debris object related to the launch. It is the object catalogued by JSpOC as 2014-022C/#39682. 2014-022H, #39687. It is either the jettisoned Dragon nose cone cover, or one of the solar panel covers   or possibly one of the Nanosat dispensers: I think it is too bright to be one of the several released nanosats itself. It was faint and slowly tumbling, alternating between invisibility and a max magnitude of about +3.5:

tumbling Dragon debris 2014-022H

(click image to enlarge)

[UPDATE:] Later I discovered a second piece of Dragon CRS-3 launch debris on my imagery. It is faint, irregular in brightness and present on two images, the best of which is this one from 20:04:07 UTC:

tumbling Dragon debris 2014-022G
(click image to enlarge)

This turns out to be the object designated 2014-022H, #39687  2014-022G, #39686. This is the other solar panel cover.

Progress M-22M in twilight

Yesterday evening in late twilight (sun 11 degrees under the horizon, waxing gibbous moon low in the sky) I observed Progress M-22M (2014-005A), the Russian cargoship that undocked from the ISS on April 7.

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The undocked Progress will be flying solo for several days, during which ionospheric tests are conducted. It will be de-orbitted on April 18 near 15:43 UT.

As usual, the Progress spacecraft was easily visible to the naked eye, reaching about mag. +2. It passed between Gemini and Canis minor (and roughly halway between Procyon and Jupiter, see image above), then over the head and body of Leo and through the Coma Berenices cluster (see imagebelow) before disappearing behind the roof. It was about 25 minutes ahead of the ISS.

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25 minutes later I did a first attempt to image the ISS in high resolution through my C6. I managed to get two images of it, but they are not of good quality. I guess I have to practise a bit more :-)

What is wrong with this "picture of Aurora from Space"? Answer: everything!

Last night (27-28 Feb 2014) saw a geomagnetic storm that caused Northern Lights (Aurora borealis) in Europe at latitudes as low as 50 deg North. My home town was largely clouded out, but reports and images from elsewhere in the Netherlands as well as the UK, Ireland and Germany poured in.

As part of the buzz surrounding this auroral display, the image above was widely shared on Twitter. It purports to show aurora as imaged by "NASA", with some retweets adding that it was purportedly taken from the International Space Station.

Real images of aurora taken by NASA, ESA, Roscosmos and JAXA astronauts onboard the ISS do exist. But the image above is not one of them. It is completely fake, and it takes a knowledgeable person only a split second to recognize it as such.

Still, and rather surprisingly, even some professional Space and Astronomy organizations that should have known better initially fell for it and retweeted it.

So what is wrong with this image? What clear clues are there it is a fake? A deconstruction:

Exhibit #1:
One thing that immediately struck me was the lack of atmosphere. The image shows about 1/3rd of the Earth globe, but no clouds and no limb brightening. That immediately makes it clear that the earth globe shown is a digital rendering, where a cloud-free map of the earth has been digitally wrapped around the globe. It is not a true photograph of the earth from space.

Exhibit #2:
In addition to not showing an atmosphere, it does show something it should not show: bathymetry in the ocean.It shows the continental shelf as a lighter-coloured element in front of the Canadian coast. The continental shelf is often depicted as such on maps, but not actually visible as such on real satellite imagery. Again, this shows that a map of the earth including bathymetric elements was digitally wrapped around a globe: it is not a true photograph of the earth from space.

Apart from these two clear flaws, the whole image in fact clearly looks digitally rendered. The contrast between the daylight and nighttime parts of the earth is much too low too.

But, there is more, including the very damning exhibit #3:

Exhibit #3:
The auroral ring (actually an oval) is wrongly positioned on the globe. In the image, it is centered on the true Pole (the earth's rotational axis), in the Arctic sea. In reality, Aurora is however a phenomena connected to the Earth's magnetic field, and it therefore is centered on the Geomagnetic pole. The Geomagnetic pole is distinctly off-set from the true pole: it is located in Northern Canada, on Ellesmere Island.

Exhibit #4:
The auroral ring/oval is a complete ring on the image. In reality, the real auroral oval is much better developed on the night-time side of the globe than on the daytime side.

Exhibit #5:
Some retweets added that the image purportedly was made from the International Space Station. The ISS is however in a low 400 km altitude orbit. Aurora itself extends from 80 km to 200-300 km, during strong outburst up to 600 km altitude. In other words, the ISS orbits not much above, and in some cases even at similar altitudes as the aurora. It does not orbit as high above earth and the aurora as shown in this picture.

In fact, it is impossible to see this large a part of the Earth globe at once from the ISS. At anyone time the maximum footprint of the ISS in it's low orbit barely spans the N-American continent, as these images show:

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The white filled circle is the area of the earth visible from the ISS. Clearly, an astronaut onboard the ISS cannot view as much as 1/3rd of the globe or more in one time, as the picture shows.

In fact, while an astronaut onboard the ISS could see a part of the auroral oval over Scandinavia or Canada, (s)he could never oversee the full auroral oval at once. This is only possible from a much higher orbit, a  Molniya orbit. So whoever insisted that image was taken from the ISS, got that part completely wrong too

Some sources say this image in reality is a digital 3D rendered graphic from an unidentified "NASA video". I doubt that NASA is the source: there is too much wrong with the graphic itself. Notably exhibit #3 and exhibit #4 are so sloppy from a scientific viewpoint, that I doubt such errors would be allowed in a NASA video.

update: it actually does come from a NASA video, to my surprise:

Yay! @gavsmith1980 has located source of "aurora" 3D pic: a 2009 video on @CassiniSaturn: http://t.co/tonZda0PKE | http://t.co/OQeww4pFX0
— PicPedant (@PicPedant) 28 februari 2014

This issue of fake images popping up when an event gathers attention in the twittersphere, is interesting: someone, somewhere picked up that image and tweeted it with a BS story attached to it. This happens very often. Even more interesting is how it highlights the quick dissemination of misinformation through social media, even by people that should know better. I was rather surprised to see several persons and organizations that should have recognized it is a fake retweeting this image.

An ISS transit over the moon, and supernova SN 2014J again

Yesterday evening 9 February near 23:38:30 local time (22:38:30 UT) the International Space Station (ISS) made a transit in front of the moon, as seen from Leiden.

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While the pass itself was good (the transit occured at 45 degrees elevation),  atmospheric conditions were far from perfect. The evening started clear, but as I was setting up the Celestron C6 fields of clouds came in. There was a strong wind rocking the telescope tube.While focussing on the moon, I noted that the seeing was abysmal: the lunar disc trembled and shivered from atmospheric turbulence, and rolling waves went over it, as if it was reflected on the surface of water. Test shots showed a much more blurred moon image, even at 1/400s, than I am used to with this instrument.

The final minutes were tense. A field of clouds came in and covered the moon minutes before the transit would start. Near the horizon I could see even thicker clouds. In the last two minutes before the transit, a gap in the scattered clouds appeared. At the moment supreme, 22:38:29 UT, the moon was right in this clear gap!

Three images out of a rapid burst series started a few seconds before the calculated transit time captured the ISS, as a ghostly dark bat in front of the moon. Nothwithstanding the bad seeing, wind and perhaps a slightly too long exposure time (1/400 second), structure is visible: the ISS solar panels are well visible for example.

The ISS was at a distance of 575 km over the British channel during the transit,  with an apparent size near 48". The transit took less than 1 second. As the ISS was not illuminated by the sun, it was visible as a dark silhouet (see the image above).


M82 and supernova SN 2014J

A few days earlier, in the evening of February 4, the sky was clear and I photographed galaxy M82 with supernova SN 2014J again. The wide field image below, a stack of 34 x 15 seconds at ISO 2000 also shows nearby spiral galaxy M81. The arrow points to the supernova:

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ISS and Orbital-1 Cygnus, 5 hours before docking

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This morning near 6:56 local time (5:56 UT) I had a visible pass of the International Space Station ISS and the Orbital-1 Cygnus commercial cargoship bringing supplies to the ISS, five hours before the latter would dock to the first. The pass had a maximum elevation of 28 degrees, in the S-SE.

The Cygnus was faint: for most of the pass it was not visible by the naked eye (nor visible in my imagery, taken with an EF 2.0/35mm lens at F2.2 and 500 ISO).

Near 5:57:05 UT however, it briefly flared to mag. +2 and the duo ISS-Cygnus then became  well visible as a result, low in the sky at about 23 degrees elevation. They were quite close, with a pass-time difference in the order of 8 seconds. As always, seeing two spacecraft this close was an impressive (if brief) sight!

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ISS and Cygnus

On September 18, Orbital Science Corporation launched an Antares rocket from Wallops, with the Cygnus COTS demo as payload. Just like SpaceX-es Dragon, the Cygnus is a commercial cargoship built to bring cargo to the ISS as part of  the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) initiative. The September 28 launch is the inaugural demonstration flight of the Cygnus.

Initially Cygnus was to dock with the ISS on September 22nd, but a communication problem between the ISS and the Cygnus board computer caused a delay. Next the launch and docking of Soyuz TMA-10M bringing a new astronaut crew to the ISS on September 25 intervened, with the result that the Cygnus docking was rescheduled for September 29th.

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In the early morning of September 29th, around 4:01 UT (6:01 am local time), ISS and the Cygnus COTS demo cargoship made a 40-degree pass in the southern sky as seen from Leiden. I had no idea how close the pair would be before actually observing the pass. It turned out to be close, the two spacecraft passing some 15 seconds after each other. The ISS was leading, Cygnus following.

Shortly after emerging from eclipse, the Cygnus was reasonably bright (mag. +3) and visible by the naked eye. But it quickly lost brightness, and by the time the pair entered the FOV of my camera, which I had aimed at Orion, Cygnus was no longer visible to the naked eye.

As a result, the image above (taken with an EF 2.0/35mm lens) is not the best: I had to pull a full suite of post-edit tricks to make the very faint trail of the Cygnus stand out a bit better. The image shows the pair traversing the area of Orion's belt and the Orion nebula.

ATV-4 and ISS, 15 hours before docking (and Progress too)

After a few cloudy and rainy days, it miraculously cleared in the afternoon of the 14th. This allowed me a last view on the ATV-4 before docking to the International Space Station ISS.

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I observed two passes. The first was in very deep evening twilight (sun at -6 degrees altitude) at 22:56 local time (20:56 UT). ISS and ATV-4 passed almost right overhead, the ATV slightly over 2 minutes in time behind ISS and both easily visible. I had set up my video equipment, but forgot to press the "record" button....

The next pass was under a darker sky, at 00:32 local time (22:32 UT). I walked a few tens of yards to the city moat to see it (I have better view at low elevations there). ISS and ATV-4 attained a maximum elevation of 28 degrees in the S-SW. The photograph above is from that pass. Using the 2.8/17-50 mm Tamron at the 17 mm setting, I could just catch ISS and ATV in one image - with a stray old Russian military satellite as a bonus (Kosmos 1315 (1981-103A), a defunct Tselina-D ELINT launched in 1981. A Japanese H-2A r/b briefly became bright as well and is visible in some images (but not the one above).



I had also set up the video, filming from my GF's appartment. About 16 minutes before the ISS pass, I filmed Progress M-19M (2013-007A). This cargoship, now filled with trash, was undocked from the ISS a few days ago to make room for the ATV. It will reenter on June 19th. In the video above, while the Progess is passing, look for a brief bright flash just below the image center at 22:13:36. This is a flashing geostationary satellite (probably NSTAR A, 1995-044A). The video next cuts to the ISS pass 16 minutes later, followed by ATV-4 and a couple of bats in the last seconds of the video.

The image below is a stack of 28 photographs, showing ATV-4, the ISS, Kosmos 1315 (barely) and the H-2A r/b (top):

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Another fine pass of ATV-4, and objects from a recent Russian Persona launch

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Following my observations of June 5-6 (see photo's and video here) and a visual observation on June 6-7, yet another fine sighting of the ATV-4 Albert Einstein was done yesterday around local midnight. First I watched the ISS pass, followed 17 minutes later by the ATV. The image above, which is a stack of six images of 5 seconds exposure each (Canon EOS 60D + EF 2.8/24mm, 640 ISO), shows the ATV-4 ascending over the rooftops as seen from the courtyard of my home in Leiden.

I also obtained video again using the WATEC. The video below shows part of the passof the ATV, and then continues with some footage of the earlier ISS pass. While the ISS is ascending over the roof, two other objects can be seen (from 1:28 in the video onwards), chasing each other from left to right just over the rooftops, in a trajectory perpendicular to that of the ISS:



These two objects are related to the launch of Kosmos 2486, a Russian military Persona satellite, the Russian version of the US Keyhole optical reconnaisance satellites. Kosmos 2486 was launched 3.5 hours before this sighting (at 18:37 UTC on June 7th) by a Soyuz rocket from Plesetsk. These objects have been catalogued as 2013-028A and B - the B object is the leading object in the video above. This would indicate the trailing object is the Persona satellite, the leading object the upper Soyuz stage.

Bringing the ATV to the ISS: a stepped process

The ATV-4 Albert Einstein, currently on it's way to the International Space Station (see images of passes over Leiden here), does not ascend in a linear fashion. The ascend towards the ISS is in phases.

Below is a diagram showing you how the orbital altitude of the ATV-4 spacecraft has developed over the past two days and will develop, if everything goes according to plan, over the coming few days untill it docks to the ISS at the 15th. As the orbit of the spacecraft is not neatly circular but somewhat an ellipse, values for the highest point (apogee) and lowest point (perigee) of the orbit are given.

click diagram to enlarge

It might surprise you, but over the past two days the orbital altitude of ATV-4 has gradually come down, not up. You can see this in the diagram above. It concerns a slight orbital altitude decrease of just a few kilometers, no more. This is because the ATV  is currently just moving in a parking orbit around earth without major manoeuvering. As a result, the orbit currently slightly decays (it is slowly pulled in by Earth as a result of gravity and atmospheric drag): it is very slightly coming down!

A major manoeuvre to counter this will occur on June 10th, lifting the spacecraft up from approximately 250 km to approximately 290 km altitude. The orbit will then slightly decay to slightly lower altitudes again, as the ATV will again be drifting. More manoeuvres raising the orbit slightly to counter this orbital decay will occur on June 12th, but the major manoeuvres will be on the 14th and 15th. These latter are the manoevres which will bring the ATV up close to the orbital altitude of the ISS (see diagram above), first bringing it up to approximately 380 km altitude, and then to about 400 to 410 km, and close to the ISS. It will be somewhat in front of the ISS initially, and move closer to the ISS as the orbit is gently raised. A complicated set of manoeuvres then will bring the ATV to the ISS for docking.

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Note: diagrams constructed using orbital data for the ATV-4 kindly provided by ESA here.

Visiting ESTEC for the #AndreTweetUp, an in-flight call with astronaut André Kuipers

On 29 May 2012, some 80 space and twitter enthusiasts gathered at the European Space Agency's (ESA) ESTEC center in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, for a "tweetup" called the #AndreTweetUp. This author was among them.

 AndreTweetUp attendants (photo: ESA)

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A "tweetup" is a gathering of twitter users. ESA organised the event around a live in-flight call with Dutch astronaut André Kuipers who is onboard the ISS. Eighty followers of the twitter acount of  André Kuipers were invited to attend, after a selection procedure that included the formulation of a question to Kuipers.

Ten of the 80 people present, actually got to ask that question during the live in-flight call . The event  included two lectures, a guided tour through the ESTEC facilities, and ended with the live video in-flight contact.

Dutch astronaut André Kuipers onboard the ISS live from space on the screen, and Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang in front of the screen moderating the live in-flight call (click image to enlarge)

For this author, who was among the lucky 80 to be invited (but alas not among the even more lucky 10 who got to ask their question to Kuipers), this kind of event was new. I jumped the twitter bandwagon late, a few months ago, and untill this #AndreTweetUp occasion, I had never heard of "tweetups".

So I had no idea what to expect. I half expected a hall full of Sheldon Coopers, dressed in Star-Trek costume, mumbling "fascinating!". Or 80 Wolowitzes, trying to hit on the ESA hostesses and talking about the space toilet they designed.

The reality was more benign. Indeed, there were a few people walking around wearing an astronaut's flight jacket covered in space-related patches (mind you: one of those actually was a genuine astronaut: ESA's Christer Fuglesang). And there were a couple of tweeps that seemed to build a life around this kind of events, recognizable by their paraphernalia that included custom t-shirts  and keychains with the words "tweetup" and "space" prominent and a mascotte in the form of a space-suit clad bear called Hughie:

Hughie

But all of these people turned out to be quite nice and normal! The evening before the event, I had a great time as part of an informal evening drink with a few of them (including but not limited to  @travelholic, @4tuneQkie, @DanielScuka and @rtimmermans) in "Einstein" in Leiden:

 Me (right) talking with ESA's Daniel Scuka (@danielscuka, left) about Space and Neandertals with Alex Neumann (@4tuneQkie, seen on back) listening, at the #spaceborrel in Einstein (Leiden) the evening before the tweetup (photo by Eico Neumann/@Travelholic)

You see: this almost looks like normal people! ;-)

Of course, this wouldn't do, so during the tweetup ESA had us all dressed in nerdy t-shirts with the ESA logo and "#AndreTweetUp" on it  ;-)

To bring in the Wolowitz factor, one of the things they let some of us do, was remotely move a robot arm on a future moon-rover located in a lab in Italy. Below is me, giving the command "move arm to left" (no word yet whether they got the rover out of the ditch again).

My Wolowitz moment: remotely moving a robot-arm on an ESA moonrover in a lab in Italy

The program was varied and started with a presentation by ESA's Walker including music videos that amongst others Elton John had made especially for this ISS mission. Walker told that by teaming up with Elton John, the amount of website hits on the ESA mission page increased a factor 2000!

  Tweeps and their laptops (for twittering) in the Erasmus hall

Next we had a very fine video presentation by one of the attendants, Remco Timmermans (@rtimmermans on Twitter), who had travelled to Baikonur to see the launch Soyuz TMA-03M blasting off Kuipers to the ISS.

We were then split-up for a guided tour through the ESTEC facilities, including a peek in the clean-labs (where alas photography was not allowed) and a 3D presentation where we got a virtual tour "trough" the ISS.

And of course, a notable number of the attendants duly tweeted all their experiences as the day progressed (photo shows a few of them listening to an explanation at the Russian Foton capsule, and tweeting about it):

The hall where we tweeps were settled, had enough to see too, as it included amongst others a life-size mockup of the European ISS module Columbus, a genuine Foton capsule and  the genuine Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator (ARD) capsule, the only European capsule having been to space and then re-enter and land safely:

 Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator (ARD). This capsule (it is the original) went to space and came back

Life-size Columbus module mock-up (multiple image stitch)

Russian Foton capsule (original)

Overview of the Erasmus hall, with mock-up Columbus module

Next Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang lectured us on his experiences with travelling to the ISS onboard a Space Shuttle, and introduced the very varied research done onboard the ISS:

ESA astronaut Christer Fuglesang, went to space twice

And then it was time for the big moment: the live in-flight video call with Dutch astronaut André Kuipers who is flying onboard the ISS as part of the PromISSe mission. The contact happened at 15:55 UTC (17:55 CEST) while the ISS was over the Galapagos and S-America, by means of a TDRS relay.

Here are some of the lucky 10 that got to ask their question lining up:

Even a "celebrity", soap-actress Babette van Veen (worldfamous in the whole of the Netherlands), got to ask a question (at ~6:15 in the video at the bottom of this post):

Below is a video showing parts of the in-flight call (as the memory card in my camera had filled up, I had no space left to film the complete in-flight call. I thought 8 Gb was enough, but no...).


It was fun and interesting to be present at this happening, and I wish to express a sincere "Thank you!" to the people of ESA and ESTEC for organizing this day!

(video) A last view of ESA's ATV-3, with ISS, FIA Radar 1 and an old Russian Soyuz upper stage

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This morning near 3:39 UTC (5:39 am local time), Europeans could witness the last visible pass of ESA's Space Freighter ATV-3 'Edoardo Amaldi' on its way to the International Space Station (ISS), less than a day away from docking to the ISS in the night of March 28/29.

I watched, photographed and filmed the pass from Leiden: footage shot with the WATEC 902H + 1.4/12mm lens, and a photograph made with the Canon EOS 450D + EF 2.0/35mm lens, can be seen above.

I got a very fine view with more than just the ISS and ATV visible. Just before the ISS became visible around 3:56 UTC a bit of  bright (mag +1) space-debris, an old Russian Soyuz Zenit upper stage crossed the sky (see first seconds of the video above, left in the FOV): 99-039B, the upper stage from the OKEAN-O launch in 1999 [edit 30/03/2012: it is a Zenit rather than a Soyuz r/b - with thanks to Ralf Vandeberg]. Next, the ISS emerged out of earth shadow eclipse near Arcturus, quickly attaining a brightness of -3 to -4. As it moved through Bootes, Corona Borealis, Hercules and into Lyra, the American military satellite FIA Radar 1 (10-046A) came into view, going the opposite direction of the ISS (nicely demonstrating that it is in a rare retrograde orbit, i.e. moves from east to west rather than west to east). As FIA Radar 1 started to descend to the west through Corona Borealis, ESA's ATV-3 came into view, again as a nice and bright naked eye object attaining about mag. 0 to +1. It followed the ISS by almost exactly 3 minutes, just a little bit too much separation alas to image the ATV and it's destination the ISS together. The photograph above (and the video) shows it together with the FIA Radar 1: ATV-3 is moving up, the FIA Radar 1 down! (note: for easthetic reasons, I photoshopped an annoying trail from the aircraft that can be seen in the video, out of the photograph).

The video ends with ATV-3 descending in the east and disappearing behind the roof of our appartement building.

I wish to thank Laurent Arzel (ESA) for providing me with predicted orbital elements with manoeuvres of ATV-3 taken into account. Some web-based satellite prediction services (and surprisingly, the German DLR in a tweet) used "old" elements from the 27th, that lead to erroneous pass times (off by over 5 minutes: these suggested the ATV was leading the ISS by 2.5 minutes, while in reality it was following by 2.5 to 3 minutes!). Thanks to Laurent's elements, I could plan for the correct situation and point some fellow amateur observers to the correct pass times.

With docking less than half a day away as I write this, our Dutch astronaut André Kuipers onboard ISS can look forward to fresh supplies of Dutch cheese soon!

Video: ATV 3 'Edouardo Amaldi', a meteor, and the ISS this morning

This morning I was up early to capture the 3:29 UTC (5:29 am CEST) pass of ESA's space freighter ATV-3 "Edouardo Amaldi". This was just before the start of twilight, so the sky was still dark and several stars can be seen on the video. The video was shot from the center of Leiden town, from the east-facing window of my girlfriend's  appartment. Camera: WATEC 902H + 1.4/12mm lens.

The ATV emerged from Earth shadow at about 38 degrees elevation in the E-SE. Initially mag. +1, it was easily visible by the naked eye, then faded as it descended towards the horizon.

The movie also features footage of a nice 3-second meteor that appeared only a few minutes before the ATV pass: as well as footage of the ISS passing the same sky area about 30 minutes before the ATV.

 Brightest star in the FOV is Altair (alpha Aquila), with the stars of the Arrow just upper left of the center, and stars of the Dolphin near the GPS clock.

Below is also a photographic image, a 6-second exposure with the Canon EOS 450D + EF 2.5/50 mm Macro lens, showing the ATV on the border of Aquila and Sagitta.

click image to enlarge

Note: with a special "thank you!" to Laurent Arzel at ESA ATV CC-flight dynamics for providing timely orbit forecasts!

André Kuipers talking from Space

This morning near 11:14 local time (10:14 UTC), Dutch astronaut André Kuipers onboard the ISS had a radio talk with a school class in Belgium on 145.800 MHz. From Leiden, I listened in using my old scanner radio and a homebrew dipole antenna (two hardware store 50 cm metal rods connected to a coax cable). Below is a recording of part of the reception (voice is André Kuipers, in Dutch):


The school class in question was a class from primary school De Regenboog in Bree, Belgium.

It is always cool to directly hear astronauts from Space. I listened in on André Kuipers talking from space before during his 2004 mission and several times have picked up communications between ISS astronauts and Russian ground stations in the past. You don't need fancy equipment for that: a normal scanner-radio and the kind of simple homebrew antenna I use will do. I use an old second-hand Realistic Pro 2042 receiver and a dipole antenna made out of a 1 meter M5 rod from the hardware store that I sawed in to 50 cm halfs, which are connected to the coax cable. Very simple but it works! See below image (cat is vital for good reception ;-p  )

ISS, Prowler, and a flashing Vortex 1 rocket

Apart from a  glimpse through clouds of the ISS on January 2nd (video posted here earlier), I managed to do my first observations of 2012 this weekend, in the evening of January 7 from Leiden and (using a remote telescope in the USA) on January 9.

Conditions were not ideal on January 7th: a lot of moonlight and intermittent clouds. I observed the HEO object USA 200 (08-010A), but due to the moonlight interference the trails were weak (but good enough to get a few positions) and the pictures not pretty.

For the night of January 8-9, I scheduled a few observations on a "remote" telescope, the 61-cm F10 Cassegrain of SSON in California. Target was Prowler (90-097E), an enigmatic object discussed here earlier.

click image to enlarge

The image series on Prowler (I always take a series of at least three images at minute intervals, in case the object is a bit off from predictions) contained a flashing stray.

This turned out to be a classified object as well: Vortex 1r, the r/b from the Vortex 1 launch (78-058B). This rocket stage is clearly tumbling or spinning, as attested by a quite regular flash pattern:

click image and diagram to enlarge

The main flashes are 2.96 seconds apart, and flanked on each side by slow secondary flashes about 0.47s before and after the sharp main flashes, giving the trail on the image a dash-dotted appearance.