Monday, December 14, 2009

Astronauts & Spacecraft captured by Amateur Astronomer



Shaun Saunders sends in a link to Wired which documents a site with absolutely amazing space photography. The site is called Telescopic Spaceflight Images and was produced and is hosted by Ralf Vandebergh.

Ralf writes on the web page about the images:
  • Images are obtained by the use of a 25cm (0.25m) Newtonian reflecting telescope. Tracking is accomplished fully manually using a second smaller scope at low magnification. The best results occur mostly at times when lighting angle, viewing angle, distance and other factors for viewing the objects were favorable. But, as the site's author puts it, often it was surprise and happenstance obtaining quality shots.

Whatever the case, I love the results!

Wired article

2 comments:

Floppy Bingo said...

Wow! of of the coolest things on the net that I have seen in a long time. I would like to hear more details of how he takes these pictures. Is he going out in the desert or to the top of a mountain. keep up the good work. The future is now!

Beam Me Up said...

Floppy
I got the impression that he was using a fairly small telescope in his back yard. I might have completely misread it, but knowing that the iss is easy to see with the naked eye, its more of just when you view it so that it is dark where you are but the iss is still in light. It is very cool.