Last night I snapped Lacrosse 5 as it made its way over my house. Lacrosse 5 is one of the US military classified Spy Satellites (or DarkSats if you are feeling dramatic). I wanted to get one long exposure with it arcing across the full frame, but a series of screw-ups meant I got three different pics. While I was watching it, I did wonder what it was watching as it sailed across my back garden (probably not much seeing as it was night… )
It looks like STS-124 launched without incident, no damage or issues being reported. It’s a shame the same can’t be said for Launch pad 39a at KSC which pretty much got blown apart (ok that’s a bit of an exaggeration) when Discovery took off.
Those are pieces of pad 39a splashing into the water below Disco’s Plume
I snapped this a few nights ago (5/6/2008 00:01:55hrs 48sec exposure). It’s a quite amazing flare from a NOSS Pair (3-4 I think). It was purely by chance that I saw them rising fast in the southwest and I hit the shutter on the cam about half way through the flare. As you can see, I didn’t really think about focus, this was taken with the Kit 18-55 lens on my D40x and it will loose focus if you even look at the lens funny. There has been some heavy post pro on this image in photoshop to loose the light pollution and bring out as much sharpness as I can.
STS-124 is underway following the successful launch of Discovery on Saturday night. The main element of the mission is the installation of the second part of the Japanese Kibo research lab, although i suspect of more pressing importance to the crew will be the replacement pump for the toilet. I hate to think how the ISS must smell, I remember the MIR has its own musty mouldy smell, along with a fruit fly infestation. But that’s another story.
