Space .....

.... Station.

This is a long exposure shot of the International Space Station ( ISS ) passing over the town hall in Ilkley. It has to be the worst quality long exposure shot I have ever taken, but as it is the first one I have taken of the ISS I'm blipping it anyway.

There have been two visible passes of the ISS this evening, the first was at just after 10 pm and the sky was too light to take a long exposure shot, but myself Mrluc and Mr P watched it pass over the moor. At a magnitude of -2.2 it was nice and bright and before long the neighbours started coming out of their houses wondering what a bunch of grown men were doing looking up at the sky and taking photos.

The excitement people have when you point out the ISS to them for the first time and explain what it is they are looking at moving across the sky is brilliant. After five minutes or so there were about half a dozen neighbours all stood in the middle of the street looking up at the sky, some had missed the ISS but myself and Mr P pointed out other bright satellites that were passing overhead.

The sky has been really clear and perfect for viewing tonight, so I decided I would try a long exposure shot to capture the trail of the second ( partial ) pass of the ISS tonight at 11:45pm. I wanted to get the skyline of the moor in view so I went out for a walk 10 minutes before it was due and ended up on the railway bridge. I didn't have time to take a test exposure and suspected I would get a bit of glare from the lights on the railway station, but have ended up with a lot more than I expected.

Anyhow, if you squint you should be able to see the trail of the ISS as it moved from the bottom right, to the center of the shot. This was a sixty second exposure and about thirty seconds after the exposure finished the ISS faded in to the earths shadow. As what you see is light from the sun reflecting of its solar panels, as soon as it enters the earths shadow it dissapears from view.

This is a terrible photo ( better large ? ) and I will have another go at taking it in the park, where there are no street lights to create glare tomorrow. But as this is my first attempt at a long exposure shot off the ISS todays blip is the train.....


..... Space station.