Tuesday 15 September 2009

More HTV-1 and Molniya satellites

Yesterday evening 13-14 September was clear again. I had a very fine near-zenith pass of the HTV-1 (09-048A) on it's way to the ISS. It was fast and bright again (mag. 0), and again distinctly orange. It flared to -2 at 19:28:35 UTC (13 Sep). On below image (taken with the Tamron lens this time, at 17 mm) it is rising over the rooftops, with the distinct orange colour visible:

click image to enlarge



I also imaged the high altitude objects USA 184 (06-027A) and USA 198 (07-060A) again later that night, using the EF 100/2.8 Macro USM lens. Below animated GIF is composed of 5 images of 10 seconds exposure, taken at 20 second intervals, and shows USA 198 between 22:04:02 and 22:05:22 UTC. It was cruising at 34300 km altitude at that time, over 56.8N, 11.9 E. The frames are crops of small parts of the original images, shown here at full pixel resolution. One pixel equals 10" (arcseconds):

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