Galileo's Camera

When I was processing the photo of the Magellanic Clouds , I noticed that four of the photos had a light trail going across it. As these are long exposure photos, a light trail means a travelling object. The light streak - Composite shot of 4x10s There are many types of illuminated travelling objects in the night sky. They can vary from natural objects to different types of man-made objects. 1. Meteors The only extra-terrestrial natural object to make star trails on a long exposure photo like this one is a meteor. During a meteor shower, you will be able to capture many trails like this during the span of an hour. One of my wishes for a very long time has been to capture a meteor shower on camera. 2. Airplanes/helicopters/drones - flying machines There is a host of man-made objects that are not necessarily space borne that can cause a light streak. These include all the flying machines invented by man. In the past, these were limited to airplanes and helicopters. But than...

I'm pretty sure quite a lot of us have seen moving stars. No these are not shooting stars, these are much slower and are reasonably bright. These are man-made satellites. Thanks to a tip-off from my dad (he's an avid reader of a local science magazine), I knew for a while that the International Space Station (ISS) is visible to naked eye just like a satellite. Only thing you need to know is where and when. Guess what? NASA has a whole service dedicated to spotting the station at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html . You can go to http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/ to subscribe for an email alert service or use Station Sightings link (direct link at http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/SSapplications/Post/JavaSSOP/JavaSSOP.html ) to get a list of dates and times when the ISS flyby will be visible above your city. After a bit of a wait, managed to capture it on my camera. Come to think of it, I think its been about 6-9 months since I first ...