Watching the ISS

On November 14 Chuck McPartlin reported the International Space Station schedule for November — thanks Chuck! Thursday looked quite promising so I set up my camera while having dinner at the Boathouse at Hendry’s Beach — how can you beat that?

Sure enough, at 6:10pm a very bright “star” rose in the WSW and sailed upward to the north. I think my dinner companions had been slightly skeptical of all the trouble I was going to, but when they saw the spectacle, they were impressed.

It is truly amazing to think that you are looking at a man-made object with seven humans living and working aloft while speeding by at five miles a second. Even though I had a wide angle lens, this image records only half of the four-minute flyby.

Note that this is a composite of six individual photos, one of which was made 33 minutes before the ISS appeared, just after sunset. Note also the Milky Way that is slightly visible to the left and parallel to the ISS track.