Image received from the International Space Station

I received an image that was being transmitted from the International Space Station as it passed nearly overhead this evening. They broadcast at about 25W of power at 145.800 MHz; an amount that is easily heard and received since the communication is line-of-sight and only a few hundred miles away. They only use it on occasion so it was nice to hear they were planning on a few days of sending images. I used a generic SDR receiver and a simple dipole and piped the audio output to MMSSTV. Some of the noise in the center of the image was because I forgot to correct the receiver for the Doppler shift of the ISS as it passed by.

Evening passes for the ISS (International Space Station) and the Shuttle in Chicago

A number of visible passes for Chicago this week:

http://www.heavens-above.com/PassSummary.aspx?satid=25544&lat=41.781312&lng=-87.605097&loc=Chicago&alt=0&tz=CST

ISS passes for the next ten days for Chicago

http://www.heavens-above.com/PassSummary.aspx?satid=25544&lat=41.781312&lng=-87.605097&loc=Chicago&alt=0&tz=CST

Moments in spaceflight

Soichi Noguchi captures a poignant moment as the Shuttle leaves the International Space Station. Click to enlarge to a higher quality image.

Moonrise from the ISS today

Evening ISS passes for the next few days in Chicago

http://www.heavens-above.com/PassSummary.aspx?satid=25544&lat=41.781312&lng=-87.605097&loc=Chicago&alt=0&tz=CST

4 Mar -2.4 19:27:17 10 WSW 19:30:00 44 NW 19:30:00 44 NW
5 Mar -3.3 18:17:05 10 SW 18:19:55 60 SE 18:22:47 10 ENE
6 Mar -2.2 18:42:14 10 WSW 18:45:00 41 NNW 18:47:31 12 NE
7 Mar -1.0 19:08:01 10 WNW 19:10:16 20 NNW 19:11:50 14 NNE
8 Mar -2.1 17:57:05 10 W 17:59:50 39 NNW 18:02:35 10 NE

It might actually be clear!

Live video feed from the International Space Station

This is great; I've been holding off on sharing this because I felt like it was too special to share widely. But here's the deal--there is a live video feed on the International Space Station. And usually it's pointing out at Earth. So literally you can watch the Earth go by live. You can experience sunrise and sunset in orbit. You can see the biggest cities' light pollution on the dark part of the orbit and sun glints of the Pacific or the swirls in the clouds in the Southern Ocean.

Here's the Live ISS video feed. If you stop the video, reload the page rather than restarting the video; otherwise regular NASA TV will start up.

See where the ISS is via http://www.heavens-above.com/orbit.aspx?satid=25544&lat=41.781312&lng=-87.605097&loc=Chicago&alt=0&tz=CST and http://www.n2yo.com
.

There are some parts of the orbit with no video download. It is also sensitive to the TDRSS capacity.

While writing this, I am watching sunrise on the ISS just south of South Africa. It is beautiful.

November ISS sightings in Chicago

You can see the International Space Station in Chicago in the evening for the rest of the month. If schedules hold, you will also be able to see the Space Shuttle as it docks with the ISS, as the Shuttle should launch on the 16th.
Here's the next 10 days.

ISS at twilight

The International Space Station on September 11th, 2009, as viewed from Chicago. Click to enlarge.

Early September ISS Shuttle passes in Chicago

See the International Space Shuttle and the Shuttle together in orbit here in Chicago:

http://www.heavens-above.com/PassSummary.aspx?satid=25544&lat=41.781312&lng=-87.605097&loc=Chicago&alt=0&tz=CST

ISS/Shuttle passes are over in Chicago

If you are searching for ISS and Shuttle passes over Chicago, tonight's was the last one for a while. If you are an early morning person, mid August will work; if not, early September is the next time you can see the ISS in Chicago.

ISS through a telescope

I just watched an awesome pass of the International Space Station over Chicago. I was able to catch it and follow* the ISS through a telescope at about 50x: the space station appeared as an eagle with orange solar panel wings, with a white body and a small white point source on the main axis. It was excellent, and that was at low power! Here was Tyrell's approach three years ago.

*follow in the sense of every twenty seconds moving a giant dome, followed by a german equatorial telescope in advance of the ISS and hoping I wasn't too slow.

Evening passes of the ISS visible in Chicago

There are a number of nice passes of the International Space Station visible in Chicago for the next two weeks. Take a look at Heavens-Above for the set for Chicago.

Here are the highlights for the evening passes, when they begin, how bright they are, and how high in the sky; click on the link above to get the full details. In some cases you will be able to see the ISS on successive orbits.

6 Jul -2.6 21:42:04 31
6 Jul -1.3 23:17:17 29
7 Jul -3.2 22:06:11 76
8 Jul -2.6 20:55:50 32
8 Jul -1.1 22:31:06 29
9 Jul -3.1 21:19:57 72
10 Jul -1.0 21:44:51 28
11 Jul -2.9 20:33:38 69
12 Jul -0.9 20:58:31 27

Kayuga impact and the videos you should watch

The Japanese Space Agency JAXA just deorbited their lunar orbiting spacecraft Kayuga.

Watch this, this, this (embedded below), or this, turn on the HD for sure, and raise a toast to the mission.



UPDATE: Oh heck, you should see one taken from the ISS while passing over Japan. Again, don't forget to hit the HD version.

Photo from the last Shuttle mission to the ISS

This has been sitting in one my browser tabs for a little while and too good not to share.


Click to enlarge. Original is 4288x2929.

Shuttle ISS pass in Chicago on Tuesday

I caught one of the ISS/Shuttle passes on Tuesday evening. All the shakiness of the Shuttle is me and not the Space Shuttle, obviously.



You still have some chances to see them pass, even if they aren't perfect passes.

ISS and Space Shuttle passes next few evenings

UPDATE 7/08/2009: Current Passes here.

We get some reasonably good passes of the International Space Station and the Shuttle here in Chicago the next few evenings. Take a look. The Shuttle will dock in three days at the ISS, so until then watch for the Shuttle trailing the ISS in the orbit. You might even see them quite close together in the sky during the pass.

UPDATE 5/13/2009: Current passes here.

Satellite collision: story to watch for future complications

Two satellites collided in orbit two days ago, creating a spray of debris that will have to be closely watched to avoid further collisions. One satellite was an Iridium, one of the 88 or so in orbit (I see it was #33), and the other was a non-functioning Russian Cosmos satellite. I hope the Cosmos had either ejected the nuclear reactor that some of them use or was non-nuclear. I see another nuclear Cosmos had a problem recently. What's interesting about this collision was the height: at 490 miles, the debris is fairly high enough to have some significant lifetime. As debris densities increase, chances of collision greatly increase, greatly increasing debris densities, increasing collisions, which... you get the idea. These sort of things are really bad for our near Earth environment.

Here's a graph of the two orbits. It was a bad high energy collision.

UPDATE: Animation of the two satellites colliding (in a virtual sense).

Big Picture does the ISS.

The Big Picture does the ISS. I just watched the ISS and Shuttle pass by to the north last evening and fade into darkness. There are still some times to see it pass in Chicago.



via Bad Astronomy

See the International Space Station and Space Shuttle in Chicago

The next several evenings offer great possibilities to view the ISS and Shuttle docked from Chicago. See this link for viewing times.

3/18/2009 UPDATE: Take a look for current Shuttle passes.