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[Chicago Astronomer Joe]

Catching Shuttle Atlantis High & Bright flyover Chicago
14 May 2010

I attended the Chicago Astronomical Society's monthly meeting, as I wanted to hear the speaker they had on particle physics - primarily detecting cosmic & gamma rays. Very interesting.

But, this night would have the Shuttle Atlantis make a great bright and high flyover Chicago...and I wanted to capture it.

On the way out from the meeting, I met my good friend and Adler floor manager Shirley, sharing stories and laughs...

Photos taken by Terry Mack

And...we go outside to check on sky conditions, which was threatening cloudy a couple of hours prior, but it had cleared up nicely and warm.

The Shuttle would be coming from the WNW and I made an educated guess where it would start to show....

You can see my green laser point the way, with Venus shining brightly to the right. The Shuttle actually ws more to the north/right in this pic.

At 9:05 pm, at small group gathered and searched for Atlantis....and I was the first to spot it...

Starting out dim, it brightened quickly and started it's 80 degree high pass at magnitude -2.3...

Arching overhead, the group was quite excited to watch perhaps the last scheduled mission of Atlantis - (I think NASA will extend the life of the three shuttles.)

Making it's way toward the SE, two of us were tracking it binoculars - me with 15 x 70's and Terry, with his massive 20 x 200's...

I observed some object well ahead of the Shuttle - dimmer but maintaining the same speed...I wonder what it could have been...?

We followed it till it started to turn red, then brown...and then...lost in the Earth's shadow...

We goofed around a bit afterwards, but of course...I needed to take a group shot...

The Chicago Astronomers and the Chicago Astronomical Society will assemble the next night for a joint fun observation session - depending on weather conditions.

[RobbW]

Joe, I missed the shuttle flyover tonight as we were driving home from our friends' home at the time. I didn't even know it was supposed to be going over until I got home and checked out Heavens-Above.com. That's when I realized I had missed the shuttle. However, it showed that the ISS should be flying over in about five minutes (21:40). The chart on H-A.com showed the track as WNW to SSW. According to the sky chart, it looked like it was supposed to be pretty low on the horizon. I wasn't sure I would be able to see it, but I grabbed my 10x50 binos and headed outside anyway. I had just set up my tripod, attached my binos, and was scanning the SW horizon for any sign of the ISS. Out of the corner of my right eye, I noticed a rather bright object floating from the NW almost straight overhead heading to the ESE. At first, I just assumed it was a jet on final approach to O'Hare. Then I realized there were no blinking lights on the object and its illumination remained constant. I trained my binos on the object gliding overhead, and suddenly realized this was the ISS. It was heading in the general trajectory the H-A.com site had indicated, just more overhead than I expected. I followed it across the sky until it slowly faded out in the ESE sky as it entered the Earth's shadow as the chart on H-A.com said it would.

That was really cool! I had never seen the ISS before. Now I'm just holding out hope that the skies can remain relatively clear tomorrow night. The ISS is scheduled to fly directly overhead around 8:30pm followed couple minutes later by Atlantis. H-A.com says the ISS should be -3.3 mag tomorrow night, whereas it was -2.0 tonight. So, even brighter tomorrow, and the Shuttle should be at -2.4. This will all be early enough in the evening that my daughter should still be awake to see it. Our friends and their kids should be over tomorrow night, too. So, I'm hoping to show all the kids the ISS and STS flying overhead. I really hope it works out as I think the kids will get a real kick out of it!

[Paulie pchris00]

Cool shots Joe.

Robbw, I hope you had a cleared sky last night than I did. I missed great passes of ISS and Atlantis because of cloud cover. The only opening was low to the WNW, which is where they should have appeared first, but they tend to be dim that low, so I never picked them up before they headed behind the clouds.

[RobbW]

Paulie, the skies magically cleared up for us around 7:30pm or so. We were having dinner with our friends and their kids at Colonial Cafe. We finished up around 8:15pm and we all started to our cars to head home for the night. Before taking off, I told out friends to keep an eye to the skies around 8:30 or so for the ISS. My wife, daughter, and I headed home and it turned 8:30 about five minutes out from our house. I pulled over onto a side street and everyone got out of the car. We scanned the NW skies for a few minutes and then spotted the ISS coming towards us. We watched until it entered the Earth's shadow in the East sky. We then got back into the car and headed home. Got home and my wife had to run in to use the facilities. I took my daughter across the street from our house to a clearing by our neighborhood lake. We scanned the NW sky again, and it was actually my 4yo daughter who spotted Atlantis first. She was VERY excited! After watching it cross into the shadows, we went inside and put her to bed.

Since the skies were still pretty clear, I decided to head out with my binos and scope and enjoyed a good 1.5 hours of viewing before getting too cold and heading back in. All in all, it was a good night for looking up!