Sky at Night

ISS & Space Shuttle Atlantis racing across the UK skies at 1657hrs on Nov 20 2009. It was the brightest body in the twilight skies at a magnitude of -3.3. Atlantis has been docked since Nov 18th 2009 and makes a great night time subject to capture. Taken with Olympus E3, 7-14mm lens of F4.0 for a total period of 2 mins 45s (11x15s continuous exposures). I lit up with tree with a strong torch for the duration of a couple of 15s exposures. The International Space Station is the biggest, brightest object orbiting Earth. The station's solar arrays span 240-feet from tip to tip, almost as wide as a football field. The ISS outshines Venus; only the sun and Moon are brighter.

Startrail with a couple of Leonids captured on the evening/morning of 16th/17th November 2009. Height of the Leonid meteor shower and disappointed only to capture a couple. Set up Olympus E3 with 7-14mm lens on tripod, 15s exposure, F4.0 and captured continuous from 2100hrs on 16th through till 0700hrs on 17th. 9 hrs of earths motion, 2000 images put together in startrails software. Nice to capture the opposite curvature of the trails above and below the celestial equator.