This subject used to be hot on SeeSat-L back in 1998, but this evening I saw ISS where I did not expect to see it -- while ISS was in the shadow of the Earth! I only noticed that my camera had captured ISS while processing the results. I was very puzzled why ISS was not much much brighter. Only after checking the time of the observation (21:15UTC), did I realize ISS was already in the Earth's shadow and no longer illuminated by the Sun. At 21:15UTC ISS was only about a minute after shadow entry, so some stray sunlight may still have been illuminating ISS. Hence, I set up the camera again for the next pass, that was predicted around 22:53UTC. Passing close to Procyon, ISS was seen again. Shadow entry on that pass was at 22:48UTC, so ISS was deep into the shadow. I re-positioned the camera towards Spica to catch it later in the pass. While not obvious, ISS was detectable after correcting for the expected motion and averaging the moved frames. I've uploaded my images to this link: https://imgur.com/a/mDX2v6b. This clearly highlights the sensitivity of my setup, but also that ISS is big enough to reflect what must be lights from bright cities while passing over Europe. An unexpected first! Cees _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Mon Mar 23 2020 - 18:27:31 UTC
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