The short version of my report is WOW! Here the details: After watching the liftoff of STS-124 on TV I had barely time to rush to the window to take a picture of a mag -6 flare by Iridium 76 about halfway between Saturn and Mars at 21:12:45 UTC, 31-MAY-08, while at the same time the ISS was just ascending the sky only 6 degrees away from the flare. Ten minutes later I could pick up the shuttle and the ET just a few degrees above the horizon and follow them for over a minute until shadow ingress. The shuttle was about mag -3 with the distinctly red External Tank about half a degree below (still have to check my pictures to be sure for the distance) showing up at about mag 0 - maybe a little brighter. I timed the passage of the two next to Saturn at 21:24:00 UTC, 31-MAY-08, which was 5 seconds later than calculated with the NASA pre-planned elements. I also had the impression that the shuttle was passing a little higher above Saturn than calculated. Maybe they were inserted a little to high. Looking through a pair of binoculars there were a few small white spots trailing the shuttle (there were just a little lower and behind but closer than the ET). These looked like something solid - pieces of ice?. This was all the more remarkable as for the better part of the day we had muggy overcast weather with thunderstorms and the clearing in the sky came only about half an hour before liftoff. Well, you have to be lucky once in a while! Gerhard HOLTKAMP Darmstadt, Germany 49.8822 N, 8.6558 E ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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