Day 30: Once around the Earth

This project is about a journey once around the Sun; tonight I got the chance to document a journey once around the Earth. I checked the spaceweather.com flybys tracker and noticed that tonight there was the chance to see not one but two passes of the International Space Station. And for once the skies were clear enough, which prompted me to dig out the tripod and set up a long exposure shot to capture the two flybys.

The first photo was a bit hit and miss, thanks to some patchy cloud cover and I figured that the second pass would offer me a better chance. Unfortunately I messed up the camera focus as I moved the camera, so it's not as sharp as it should have been. But I got my shot and I'm more than happy with it.

Now, I don't know about you, but the thing that strikes me most about the photo below is the colour: it's ORANGE! To my eyes, the sky looked dark, and fairly clear. I was shocked when the picture came up on the camera screen and it brought it home to me again just how much light is wasted and sent upwards.

I waved, but I don't think the astronauts saw me ;-)

The International Space Station streaks across the sky