STS 122 launched yesterday on time (to my surprise after the weather forecast), and will, with the space station be visible over the UK.

This evening (8th) the ISS will pass overhead at about 17:55 (and later at 19:25), and the space shuttle will probably be between 10 and 20 minutes behind it.

Tomorrow (9th) the shuttle will be docking with the space station, I haven't been able to find out at what time, but if they haven't already docked by tomorrow evening they will be much closer in the sky, hopefully only a few seconds apart or less. It'll pass overhead at about 18:15.

To get exact times check Heavens Above. Be a tad sceptical with the times listed for the space shuttle as it is changing its orbit gradually which can often throw the numbers out.

Thanks to faulty sensors in the external fuel tank the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis has been postponed again right back until the 2nd of January.

It's mission is to carry the European Space Agency's Columbus lab to the International Space Station.

However it, along with the Space Station will still be visible from the UK, the bad news is in the morning instead of the early evening. Unless of course it gets put back another three or four weeks.

Instead of doing what I normally do of posting with very little notice, I'm going to give some notice as these shuttle and space station flyovers seem pretty popular to readers of my blog.

The Space Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to launch on the 6th of December, it'll be on a mission to the International Space Station carrying Europe's Columbus laboratory to the station.

Like Endeavour's last mission back in August it will be visible from the UK in the evenings. By the 10th of December it'll make two passes each evening, and that will continue for about a week.

The shuttle typically takes a couple of days to catch up with and dock with the space station. The last time we didn't get to see them close together before docking, they were separated by several minutes.

If I'm feeling energetic enough, and we have the chance to see the two maybe a few hundred metres apart I'll try and take a few more images, the same way as I did with Endeavour.

Exact times for the space station can be found by using Heavens Above, the space shuttle will be posted around or just after launch, but as the shuttle is changing orbit so the data can be off by a wide margin.

The advantage with this launch being winter is you can take your kids out to see it as it gets dark earlier. The Sun has to be just at the right position to see satellites, it needs to be below the horizon for us so the sky is dark, but still above the horizon a few hundred kilometres up or more so it can illuminate whatever we're trying to look at. Which is why the visibility is always a just before sunrise or just after sunset.

So here's the video I promised a few days ago. This was cut down from about 3 minutes of footage taken with my Toucam Pro II webcam at prime focus of my 150mm reflector (1200mm focal length).

[video:soapbox:4f4d318f-0076-4b9f-838b-5724fa912b4a]
Video: ISS and STS118

From around 7000 frames, just a few dozen actually had the space station and the shuttle in. Attempting to move a telescope of that size accurately by hand is no small task.

The star at the beginning of the footage is Alkaid / Eta Ursae Majoris. I knew the space station would pass near to this star so this was my assurance that I would at least get some footage of the station if I was unable to point the telescope at the station. The first image in my previous post is from this section of the video.

This video has been slowed down by half compared to the original to give you at least some chance of seeing it. Brightness was set by using Jupiter and I guessed the exposure at 1/1000 of a second, which I think work fairly well, although it think the brightness could of done with being a tiny bit lower.

Now this makes a change from my other photos of the Space Station and Space Shuttle.

I hooked my Toucam Pro II webcam to my 6 inch TAL 2M reflector (at prime focus) to take these. By my reckoning the middle two pictures here are at a distance of around 400km, the first and last probably closer to 700-800km.

You can see the Shuttle quite well on the first three images you can make out the black engine area towards one side of the station.

In a future post I'll blow one of the images up and we can see if we can point out the individual modules of the station, I can see three or four in the last image quite well. I've also got the video sat here, so you can see what I had to work with. Yes hand guiding the telescope to keep up with the thing is rather difficult.

Update: Here's the video.

Looks like the Space Shuttle had already docked a few hours before it was possible to image them together directly (annoying) this evening (10th).

However I've taken last nights images (9th of August), and merged the two together.

You'll notice how much the Shuttle's orbit was slightly off compared to that of the ISS.

These two photos are seperated by about 5 minutes, and as such the stars are all doubled up. The Milky Way is quite visible and so is the North American nebula.

I should of dragged the telescope out and mounted the camera on it and taken a single long exposure. Oh well maybe next time.