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[patrickm]

After seeing Steppenwolf's brave rendition of Samuel Becket's Endgame, I headed to the parking garage, grabbed my wife's Cannon and binocs, and then popped up to the top of the parking garage. The top of the four story garage turned out to be a pretty great urban place to watch-above the street lights and empty! I was hoping to see the new moon, but clouds were rolling in from the west and everything below about 15deg was obscured.

Venus and Saturn were both visible, with Venus shining like a lighthouse beacon, and I was now about to be presented with a bonus flyover by STS-132 Endeavor. I've never tried to shoot photos of any of them, but threw my wife's zoom on and started shooting.

I got terrible depictions of all of the above, but some pretty nice pieces of abstract art.

Venus




STS-132 Inbound

(Not sure about the ghost image lower right. Must have been a distant plane, but looks cool.)



STS-132 Overhead


STS-132 Outbound



It was the brightest I've ever seen one of their flyovers. I have seen one nearly as bright when STS+ISS were linked up, but that had a lot larger surface area. Still, I don't remember it being this luminous. Julia called me from the car and said she'd had to pull over to call because it was freaking her out how bright it was!

After STS-132 had finished streaking overhead to my delight, I turned back west to see a plane approaching me from its takeoff at O'Hare. After using the zoom lens to confirm the presence of red and green navigation lights, I decided to see if I could shoot a couple just to see how they would look.




I was then given a bonus, when it banked to the north as it continued to ascend. When I took my eye off of the finder, I realized that it was making a beeline right for Venus!

Plane horizontal from left to right and Venus vertical on right. Note the nav lights on the approaching aircraft. I think this pic is my favorite of the group.

I packed up to leave and started walking when I spied Saturn above. I stopped for a second and used the hood of somebody's car to shoot a couple, not that it appears to have done any good steadying the frame!




So there ya go. With the right instructor, I think this would make a good tenth grade photography project...I wish I'd taken photography!

Lots to work on for technique, but sometimes the lemons make good lemonade!

My favorite picture from the hundreds I took during out trip to Peru in March was an accidental shot of the ground as I jogged back to the car.


Blind squirrel-nut


All photos ©2010 pkm

[RobbW]

Good spotting, patrick. I had checked out Heavens-Above.com last night to see what times the ISS and STS were flying over tonight. As my wife, 4yo daughter, and I were driving home from dinner with our friends, I pulled the car over at around 8:30pm at a spot with a good view of the whole sky. I got my daughter out and my wife followed. I told my daughter all about what we were going to see. She was very excited. Finally, from the NW sky, an object almost as bright as Venus started flying overhead. We watched it streak over and to the East sky until we couldn't see it anymore. I knew the STS was supposed to follow shortly thereafter, but couldn't remember exactly how long after the ISS. We waited and watched for a few minutes longer until my wife notified me that she had to go to the bathroom. So we drove the remaining 5 minutes home. My wife headed in and my daughter and I headed across the street to a good clearing and started scanning the NW sky. My daughter was actually the first to spot the STS. She pointed up and said, "Daddy, is that it?" And sure enough it was! We watched it streak across in the same line as the ISS until we could see it no more. My daughter was so excited that she came running into the house to tell mommy all about it. It was a pretty cool feeling to have shown the ISS and STS to my daughter.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Dang Patrick...

These are quite cool pics!

I completely forgot the passes and neglected to research the times.

We were probably in the midst of setting up the scopes and it fly by un-noticed.

Damn!

On that ghostly image preceding the Shuttle...

I saw a fainter object ahead of the Shuttle Friday night with my 15x70 binocs as it made a flyover...I think it's the same object...whatever it is.

Quite cool man...

[Paulie pchris00]

Interesting pics Patrick! How did they manage to sneak so much booze into the shuttle?!? Lol. I caught Atlantis Friday night as well, with my girlfriend and her dad. It was the first time I've ever seen a shuttle undocked from ISS. I let Hillary's dad have a look with my 10x50 binoculars, so he spotted it first. Hillary got to see it in the binos too, while I managed to get it in my 6"Dob. I had a pretty good look, even with just a 25mm eyepiece. Then I let Hillary look through the scope while I tried to keep Atlantis in view through the finder scope. That was difficult, to say the least. There was some contortionism involved. In my excitement to finally see a space shuttle on orbit, I forgot to wave to them.

Atlantis was much brighter than I expected, and I thought even brighter than the -2.0 that heavens-above predicted. I think it's because it was still in a lower orbit than ISS.

Speaking of ISS, it came by about half an hour later, and Hillary stayed out with me to see it. Not the greatest of views, but not bad either. I was really looking forward to Saturday night's Atlantis and ISS flyovers though, which were supposed to be pretty ones, but the clouds got in the way.

I'm glad to hear that everybody got to see our two spacecraft on orbit this weekend.