It was a great astronomy night for me tonight up here in the woods of Marlborough. Temps were in the high 40’s with no clouds, and no wind. My viewing sight (I was hoping) was perfect to try to see the Space Shuttle about 8 minutes after it lifted off. I got word that a few did see it, but they were down state near the shore. I tried but no luck.  I was rewarded at about 8:22 when I watched the International Space Station fly directly over head at a bright magnitude at about -3.0. I had my camera ready to go and managed to capture about half of its visable flight over our area before it faded out. The pictue below is what I saw.

I was using an 18mm Nikon Lens on a Canon 20d modified camera. The exposure was 1 1/2 minutes at 800 asa. I didn’t want to use a longer exposure to get star trails as I didn’t set up my Losmandy mount tonight. You can clearly see the ISS, Orion, and other objects, including the Rosette Nebula, visable just to the left whre the ISS trail stopped. It’s just a smudge of red, but captured none the less.

Stay tuned, tomorrow I will show you the Geo-Satellites I captured…..

I am very happy with the clear skies tonight!

Alan