Last week i saw the shuttle and the ISS streak accross the sky for the first time. A colleague of mine (thanks Kurt !) gave me a link to a nice little iphone App called "SightSpaceStation" and although the name is a little weird, it turned out to be a great app that overlays the ISS's orbit over the iphone camera's image.
So when the shuttle undocked from the ISS last week i took my wife and kids outside at 19:15, held up the app and we first saw the shuttle appear and then following right after, the ISS appeared.
WOW and HOLY CRAP !
You really could only see two little specks up in the sky but my heart started to race anyway. I imagined the astronauts sitting at the controls of the shuttle getting ready for re-entry. My son was quite disappointed though - "Dad - i can just see two little dots - you said we'd see a spaceship and a space station !" - i guess he was waiting for a star destroyer or a cool looking space station.
The next night when i put my daughter to bed she wanted to look out the window so that she could "see the robots again" : ) I thought that was pretty funny. I hope that when they get older that they'll remember that night standing at the window in their jammies watching two dots up in the sky that had their dad all excited.
I think that maybe with this iphone app i could point my telescope at a specific spot and then maybe i'll get lucky and might get a shot of the ISS next time it swings by - which does not seem to happen alot when you live in Switzerland.
Have any of you successfully taken a picture of the ISS ? I wish i was able to just fly to Florida to see the last Space Shuttle take off in April.....
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