2010-02-21 On Sunday night, first Shuttle, and 10 minutes later the ISS passed over Southern Africa, from South-West, over the half-lit Moon, disappearing in Earth’s shadow in North-East.

Kos Coronaios from Limpopo Astronomy / Soutpansberg astronomy Club has captured wide-field view of the ISS path, while I got myself into “high-speed chase” of the Shuttle and ISS.

 

Image by Kos Coronaios

The image below is a combination of two images, taken 10 minutes apart.

2009-12-24 One of the best visible from South Africa passes of the International Space Station with docked Soyuz TMA17 spacecraft ! Equipment used: TAL-200 Klevtsov-Cassegrain telescope on Equatorial mount; Canon-EOS 350D camera at prime focus. The image of Jupiter was taken just minutes before the event and has been inserted into the main image for comparison of the apparent sizes and brightness. Both images were taken at ISO-400 and 1/800 sec shutter speed. The shutter speed was set for the ISS.

 

2009-12-22 Just minutes before ISS appeared above the horizon, Kos Coronaios in Louis Trichardt and myself in Johannesburg had our equipment set and ready for action. It first was noticed as a bright star of orange color, almost stationary. My Foton AstroCam was set up on a normal tripod, aimed at two stars, where according to predictions by Heavens Above the ISS was supposed to pass.. and it did! The video clip and frame size have been reduced down to 650 kB for easy download

Kos has done series of wide field images as ISS was moving across the sky ..

 

.. and I have decided to use the opportunity and take few close-up images. I've ended up with almost 250! But no regret, they came out quite good. This image shows ISS as it appeared approximately 30 degrees above horizon.

 

... and this image shows ISS when it almost reached it's maximum altitude of over 60 degrees as was seen from Johannesburg . Both images are single exposures, solar panels and structure are clearly seen on both images

 

Just over a minute after ISS has gone into the Earth's shadow, Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft followed, but with apparently different orbit, heading towards Pleades. I've manages to take a number of images, but this one has really surprised me. It looks nothing like the rest of images. What is it?

Send your comments and images to Oleg: news@astronomical.co.za