Space station .....

..... attempt #2

One word describes tonight ....

.... Absolutley f***ing amazing.

OK that was three words and one of them was a swear word ( sorry mum ), but one word does not do the night justice.

After yesterday's 'arty' ISS blip this evening I thought I would have another attempt at capturing a long exposure of the International Space Station. Following the beautiful sunset this evening I had a walk up to Middleton to find a nice high vantage point looking over the town and without any streetlights nearby. I ended up on Slates lane next to a field of cows mooing away ( the cows were mooing, not me ) and set up my tripod.

The sky has been lovely and clear and as I was on a country lane with no streetlights nearby, the stars were lovely and bright. Whilst on the walk up and waiting for the ISS I saw 7 meteors from the pereids meteor shower that will be peaking in a couple of days. If the sky is clear on the 12th I'll be heading up on to the moor to try and photograph the peak of the meteor shower.

After a couple of test exposures it was time for the ISS to appear. Although I've seen the ISS dozens of times over the last 18 months, tonight's pass has to be the brightest and most stunning that I have seen to date. Most likely because I was in the middle of countryside with little light pollution, it was even brighter than when it passed directly overhead on boxing day when I was at my parents place in London.

This shot is the sixty second exposure I took, which finished just as the Space station was about to pass in front of the bright star Altair ( just to the left of the trail ). the lights at the bottom of the image are in Ilkley and the orange glow sillhouetting the moor are the lights from Keighley. This was the shot I was trying to get yesterday. Thank you once again for all the lovely comments on Yesterday's blip.

On my walk home I saw two hedgehogs and took a long exposure shot of one of them. I stopped off in town to take a photo of an Iridium flare ( iridium 22 ) with the church in the foreground. It was a lovely bright flare, but unfortunately the focus on my camera was out. The satellite and meteor viewing has been brilliant tonight and even though this blip probably makes me sound geekier than you already think I am, today's blip is .....


..... Space station attempt #2

Large International Space Station.

Post script :

It appears I am not the only person to blip the ISS tonight, here are the others I have found....

Carolg
Purpleface
Lunajoo
GilesGuthrie

And a Perseid meteor from Dougiebuster