Rare double satellite pass
 

It was such a beautiful and clear day in Houston, I decided to to check out satellite overflys. After a minute there was the realization that two were going over at the same time. I have four minutes to set up and catch it.

Moon at top left, Orion at top right. To the lower left of center is the Hubble Space Telescope heading West to East, and just to the right of center is an Iridium flare, number 56 I believe, heading North to South.

<img src="http://www.newzucanuze.com/images/SatPassFull.jpg">

A full res version is <a href="http://www.newzucanuze.com/images/SatPassFull.tif">here</a>.

Welcome back NBN. We've missed you.

Next time I'm in TX...

How long was the exposure? :confused:

8 seconds, Bruce. Timing is critical bacuase the flares only last about 10 seconds or so.

Beautiful!

Couldn't make 'em out on the posted pic, but the giant .tif shows them really well! Might try to blacken the background a bit, though.

That may be your monitor. The posted pic on mine is as black as possible and I can make them out, but it's not easy. :mg:

Pretty damn good shooting with 10 minutes to get ready and a 10 second window, plus a huge amount of sky where they weren't. Make that man a sniper.

You are absolutely right, Bruce. I just looked at it here on my much nicer 19" HP LCD monitor (as opposed to 17" POS at work), and there the tracks are, plain as day. Now I've got to d/l the tiff here, because it will be that much better!

I should have known that NBN knew his shit. I'm a doofus sometimes.

Awesome! I have managed to see a few satellites in the distant past (usually when up in the mountains of Colorado) but have never captured any on film. Too much light pollution where I am now but I still want to get a new telescope one of these days anyway.

Orion in the upper right sure makes a good reference point

Nice capture on the sats. You into astronomy at all?

I do some hobby work with satellites too...:-)