Right - two images.

The 'blue' one - tonights first pass. Each image was 6sec, 33mm, ISO 100.

The second one (with the 'flare') . Each image was 5 sec, 17mm, ISO 500

SO DID I - Travelling from N to South - in the Southern Sky. The arc the ISS drew would have gone over the top of it.

Just doing something with my pics from that ISS pass - did you see it brighten near zenith?

(We're only 40 miles apart - should be the same meteor)

Doug

Ya think?

Oh - literally - I put my camera out ready for meteor hunting.

'Shutter down......dum de dummmmm dumm de dumm......30 seconds..shutter up'

The SECOND the shutter went up - an enormous grazing perseid across 40 - 50 degrees of sky...missed it by less than a second.

Doug

I was thinking of getting a cheap fisheye lens ( and for fisheye - £150 is cheap ) and doing something a bit better for meteor observations...and...if it works... get a cheap Canon 300D, and set up a little rig that can look for them every night. It's one of those 'maybe' projects.

Doug

We don't know anywhere near enough about the local weather or the fluid dynamics of the crater topography to know where might or might not be good for cleaning.

Doug

I don't touch the images really - just leave the JPG as-is from the camera. But - while they are a bit red - if it's cloudy..the sky is that bright and that red. What the long exposure is doing is giving that same brightness from a little bit of haze. Leicester is really REALLY bad for light pollution. It could be tweaked a little - but hey - the camera never lies

Doug

Wake up, scratch, roll over, go back to sleep.

We've all been there.

Thanks for the updates Alan.

Doug

We got cleaned near to here as well..not just right over at those streaks...probably because of the high winds related to the start of the storm

Doug

Probably not a lot of speed difference - but there is a difference

ISS - 7.71km/sec STS - 7.72km/sec

It's all parallax.

Doug

That first shot I used the same patch of sky and lined up the background stars.

This image - is a composite of two 20s exposures taken in ROUGHLY the same part of the sky but simply overlayed to show the length of the trails in 20s - the the dimmer, lower and thus faster STS drawing out a longer streak in 20s than ISS

Same kit and settings as before.

Doug

Got the two of them...but these two merged images are about 4 minutes apart and then overlayed as best I can to show relative magnitude. STS was brighter than this earlier on - but it dimmed much earlier in the East than ISS (lower orbit) - great to see 10 people fly over my head in 5 minutes

Canon 400D, 17mm @ f2.8 20s @ ISO400 (for both shots)

Doug

It's actually not an issue. I don't pimp the idea of donations etc - but those who do want to contribute, can. We get enough from the tidy text ads at the bottom of each page to pay for the hosting - and combined with the odd donation it leaves enough to do things like the 2000 Sols posters or treat Steve to dinner and beers at Wagammama's in Milton Keynes.

Doug

That was published on Space.com yesterday - and is superceeded somewhat by the Aug 7th JPL article

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pr.../20070807a.html

Doug

I figure that at a 4x ratio for Tesco Clubcard points being turned into OU courses - I can try the Level 1 course essentially for free - see if I like how the OU works - and then pay for the more substantial course in the new year.

Doug

I start S283 in Feb, and doing S196 in Sept/Nov as a precursor.

Well - the animations were repeated in so far as we all saw them in 'The Planets' (which to date is the best series they've done I think)

It was an interesting program though - looking forward to the other 5. I'm actually signing up to start an OU course in September

Doug

Off topic posts moved - http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=2549

Or how about people listen to the mods and think before posting and then we don't have to do any cleaning up at all?

Only if you spent you entire time here with your eyes closed would you think that the sorts of posts that were culled were ever going to be acceptable. I don't intend to leave further reminders for people. There is a big fat reminder in the form of the Forum Guidelines : specifically

2. Acceptable Behaviour
- 2.1 Every post must remain respectful of the opinion of others, even if contrary to your own.
- 2.2 Posts should make a contribution. Think - does what I am about to post add anything to the discussion. If the answer is no - should you really be posting it?
- 2.3 Before asking a question or starting a thread for which there might be something similar already in existence, have a brief look for a similar thread, or use the forum search tool to search for it first.
- 2.4 Don't rant. If you have a point to make...make it and move on. Do not litter your every post making the same point again and again. If you want somewhere to vent - get yourself a blog.
- 2.5 Arguments. If an argument between two people begins, take it to email or private message - we don't want to see your fights in the forum.

If people wish to ignore those rules, they'll find their posts deleted without warning and continued behaviour in breach of those rules will result in accounts getting deleted. It's how it's been for 3.5 years - it's how it'll continue to be. If you can't figure out how to stick to those rules without a trail of rule-breaking crumbs - then you shouldn't be posting at all.



To paraphrase me - members who ignore the rules will probably find themselves banned. There are no lessons that need learning - no posts to be made an example. There are a set of rules - they've been in place nearly a year - most people follow them. Those that are unable or refuse to do so will have posts deleted and , if they do so continually, their accounts closed.

I'm not going to waste my time, nor am I going to ask the admin/mod team to waste theirs by leaving a trail of who-did-what-and-what-we-did-about-it every time a post needs culling. We ALL have better things to do.

Doug

Well - at least you get a a true-to-life test of the beacon system before the calibs later in the month.

Doug

That's fine - but I wont be clearing it up if it gets personal ( as I had to last time ). Of course the 29 pages looked civilized. Any thread would after moderator activity. (Sorry to be negative about this - but to say a thread looks fine is to utterly miss the crux of forum management)

We're not having a erosion/deposition debate again. It got overly heated and personal last time. It's not happening again.

Doug

It's the terrain returning to its normal state - soil with berries on top.

Berries 'shadow' window from soil
Squish berries into soil
Soil exposed
Soil blown away until berries begin to re-appear
Once they reappear, the soil is shadowed once again.

Doug

I know - I have bootcamp installed...but that's not the point.

Doug

The Photosynth technology preview runs only on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista.

Booooooo.