Shuttle/International Space Station Pass/Photo Experiment

Yes, more space shuttle/ISS photos. It passed NW of the city tonight -- and it was a few minutes late. This evening it was Dale Stanton,sister Shelley, myself and photog friend John ( no not the NFL commentator) Madden.

Just when we thought we had missed it, Dale spotted it coming out almost due west and not SW like we had thought.

As an experiment I tried to shoot some telephoto stills with my Sony video/digital still camera. The Sony has a 30 X optical zoom and can shoot digital stills saved to a Sony memory card.

Since the telephoto was (I'm guessing) equivalent to a 1500 mm lens,I thought if I used a fast shutter speed I might be able to discern a shape.

What you see here are the results with a LOT of tweaking in Photoshop. Kind of looks like a - er -um - flying swastika.

Click to enlarge:

Here's one of Dale's pix. I'm guessing the wavy trail is due to mirror bounce.

Dale writes:

"The squiggles are from the mirror in SLR's that slaps up out of the way so the image can be recorded. That mirror does shake the camera when it flips up and as you see, it settles down in about 2 seconds. This was a 2-second exposure.

(Yes, I have a fancy lens with Image Stabilization, but it only works when the shutter button is pressed half way down. Using the remote, I don't press the shutter button.)




Here is an official NASA photo from the Space Shuttle taken last week.