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.

Image of the day: Enceladus

Enceladus' north pole.


Click to enlarge to awesome.

via Planetary Society Blog.

Two awesome things you have already heard about

The LRO imaged most of the Apollo landing site on the Moon. Things will get better as the orbital parameters are modified.

There appears to have been an impact of some sort on Jupiter, first seen by an Australian amateur.

IR clouds

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

Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter first images

The first test images are back from the LRO.





I've annotated a previous image of the moon with the location of the image: The orange markers are at the crater Hell E, which is listed in the press release as being just a few kilometers west of the image site. Hell E is listed as 10km across, so the images are just a touch to the right of that crater. Click on the image for a large original.



Credit for the LRO images are NASA/GSFC/ASU.