Spotting the International Space Station - Part 2

Despite assuring my husband that I'd taken enough photographs of the ISS and we could put the tripod away, I couldn't resist going back out yesterday for the last extremely bright passing of the ISS until June.

Last night's first pass was relatively early and so the first few photos are quite light. I could tell it was still twilight as I had a couple of bats keeping me company. I ended up being outside for almost an hour as once the ISS had passed, I then started spotting constellations. I just could have done with a slightly wider angle lens, maybe in June!

Again, I started with firing off a few test shots, to check what ISO worked and to check the sky was in focus. This time the ISS passed much higher in the sky, but it gave me plenty of time to grab a few shots.

In the last photo, if you look really closely you can see a second, much fainter, light trail behind the ISS, about a couple of inches from the top in the middle of the tree. This is the Dragon cargo ship, due to connect with the ISS today.

I then started gazing at the stars, wondering what I was looking at and downloaded the Star Chart app. I do love Wifi, being able to download apps from my back garden is amazing! This gave me a much better idea of what I was looking at.

I was determined to photograph The Plough, but my lens wasn't quite wide enough, try as I might I could only capture six of the seven stars. A plane did fly past as I was capturing it though, which added a bit of interest and made me feel a bit better about not getting the whole constellation. Something to aim for in June!