ISS above Amsterdam

scibuff — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:13:28 +0000

Here’s my first shot of the International Space Station (ISS) passing over Amsterdam (taken at 19:00 UTC on March 07, 2010). The station passed right through the constellation Orion only a fraction of a degree north of the Orion’s belt.

ISS Above Amsterdam crossing the constellation of Orion - (4 subframes exp. 10s f/5.6 ISO 1600 each, stacked with RegiStax)

The ISS will be visible in Amsterdam until March 20 and the next visibility window will start on April 10. Below is the list of the “best” passes over the city:

Date	Mag.	Start *	End *
8 Mar	-1.9	18:52:50	18:57:43
8 Mar	-3.1	20:27:20	20:29:57
9 Mar	-2.8	19:17:15	19:22:35
9 Mar	-1.8	20:52:15	20:54:05
10 Mar	-3.3	19:42:01	19:46:38
10 Mar	-0.6	21:17:11	21:18:08
11 Mar	-3.4	20:06:53	20:10:38
11 Mar	0.2	21:42:06	21:42:08
11 Mar	-3.4	20:06:53	20:10:38
11 Mar	0.2	21:42:06	21:42:08
12 Mar	-3.2	18:56:35	19:02:21
12 Mar	-3.3	20:31:44	20:34:35
13 Mar	-3.3	19:21:23	19:27:01
13 Mar	-1.7	20:56:37	20:58:31
14 Mar	-3.2	19:46:11	19:50:56
14 Mar	-0.5	21:21:38	21:22:26
15 Mar	-2.4	20:11:00	20:14:51
16 Mar	-3.0	19:00:31	19:06:16
16 Mar	-1.3	20:35:59	20:38:46
17 Mar	-2.2	19:25:16	19:30:44
17 Mar	-0.3	21:02:20	21:02:44
18 Mar	-1.1	19:50:13	19:54:43
20 Mar	-0.9	19:04:20	19:08:45

* all times are in CET (UTC+1) and represent the moment when the station’s elevation is 10°.

Source: Heavens-Above.com

For more information about (visible) passes of ISS, and satellites, not only in Amsterdam but for any place on Earth, visit the heavens above website. You can also follow @twisst on twitter.

Waxing Crescent Moon Tonight

scibuff — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:14:18 +0000

Originally, I planned to continue my ISS above London series although now it would be renamed to ISS above Amsterdam. Unfortunately, I missed tonight’s fly over between 17:41:57 and 17:48:47 GMT when the ISS passed only a few degrees south of the Moon.

Fortunately, freezing out on the roof terrace wasn’t a complete waste of time as I managed to take the following shot of the crescent Moon [click to embiggen].

Photo of waxing crescent Moon taken tonight through a refractor ATC Monar (D=70mm f/4.6) with Canon 450D, exp. 1/50s

In the photo above, 25% of the surface is illuminated. At the time, the Moon was at the distance of 400,438 km only a few hours after reaching the apogee (January 20, 2010 at 14:55 GMT). Chromatic aberration, caused by the failure of the primary lens to focus all colors to the same point due to different refractive index for different wavelengths of light, is noticeable on the edges (green in the bottom left, red in bottom right, and blue in top right) but quite obvious in the original (uncropped) image [~2mb] with the resolution of 4272px x 2848px.

As there is no need for colors in lunar images, I was quite happy to “correct” the chromatic aberration by setting the image [click to embiggen] to gray-scale:

Grayscale photo of waxing crescent Moon taken tonight (eq and exp. details same as above)

SciBuff.com » ISS from Amsterdam

ISS above Amsterdam

Waxing Crescent Moon Tonight