An Amateur Astronomer’s View of the Space Shuttle Discovery Cozying Up to the ISS

An Amateur Astronomer’s View of the Space Shuttle Discovery Cozying Up to the ISS.
This is pretty amazing. This guy, Rob Bullen, guided his 8.5″ telescope with a Cannon 40D BY HAND to get this photo of the shuttle about to dock with the ISS. The level of precision to guide a telescope at a moving target 190 miles up is pretty impressive. You breath a little hard, and you’ll move the telescope too far.

Nice work, Rob!

Now that this is the last shuttle mission, I will need to find another reason to get up in the middle of the night to catch a glimpse of the orbiting shuttle. I never saw a launch in person except for back in August 2009 when a night launch trajectory took the shuttle over New England, and I saw the powered flyby. It was impressive.

Another fond memory as a child is being at Kennedy Space Center prior to the Shuttle program really kicking off. We got to wonder around the VAB and all over Pad 39a. Standing on the pad where the Apollo missions started was a highlight of a kid that spent hours in a library reading everything I could about Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.