Knowing when and whereto look, many enthusiastic sky gazers havebeen able to spot the International Space Station (ISS) asa bright star streakingthrough the twilight.But with a digital camera and a small telescope, recognizabl imagesare possible too.Astronomer Ricardo Borb offers this example of theSpace Shuttl Discovery docked wit the ISS, recorded this August fromhis backyard in Ottawa, Canada.Operating a digital video camera on an 8 inch reflecting telescope,Borba tracked the Earth-orbiting pair by hand.Unwanted telescope motion and atmospheri blurring caused most of thevideo frames to be indistinct, still the singlebest frame (left) from his video sequence is amazingly sharp.For comparison, he constructed a computer generatedimage (right) showing the approximate orientation of the Shuttle/ISS dockingconfiguration based o virtual3D models availabl on the web.
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