Here’s my photo of station and shuttle from Massachusetts on Wednesday evening:
It was really nice seeing Brendan’s video from the shuttle overflight on Tuesday evening. I watched the pair fly over Boston two orbits earlier, and his video definitely captured the sense of what it was like to see them go past that evening.
The weather forecast for landing tomorrow (Thursday) evening in Florida is looking uncertain. If the shuttle stays up for another day, many people in North America may have another chance to watch the duo flying overhead tomorrow night.
UPDATE BY BRENDAN: A final decision on whether Discovery can land today will come by 5:40 PM EDT. You can follow developments at Spaceflight Now.
If Discovery doesn’t land today, tonight’s double flyovers will be worth checking out, but the pair will be even further apart in the sky than last night — 141 seconds (2:21) at the time of their potential pass over Colorado, as opposed to 73 seconds last night and 13 seconds two nights ago. Here’s a look at where they’d be in the sky over Denver at 8:01:30 PM and 8:03:00 PM MDT, respectively, if the Shuttle is still up there:
For local details on flyover times (you can see the ISS regardless of whether the Shuttle is there too), go to the Simple Satellite Tracker or Heavens-Above.
[Bumped. -ed. // Original timestamp Sep 10, 2009 @ 4:07.]
Sean,
In addition to “promoting” your post to the front page, I took the liberty of posting a larger version of your photo here (while still linking to the original at Bluebrook, of course). I hope you don’t mind. I just felt that it’s a really nice photo, and it’s a shame to hide it in such a small thumbnail. 🙂 But if you’d rather go back to the thumbnail version, feel free to re-edit the post.
Looks like you caught the Shuttle “flaring” just before it entered the Earth’s shadow — am I right? If so, that’s very cool. I didn’t know the Shuttle flared! I know the ISS sometimes does, because of its solar panels, but I wonder what part of the Shuttle is reflective enough to do that?