Tag: iss

Space Station eclipse photo isn’t real

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After the asphyxiated Capetonian dog, I’ve discovered that there’s even more fakery and hoaxism on the internet.
Hoodathunkit?

Lookie here: https://gizmodo.com/this-mind-blowing-image-of-the-eclipse-cant-possibly-be-5912184

Says Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz:

It’s a 3D rendering made in Terragen 2 by DevianArt user ~A4size-ska. It took 38 hours to render. The image of the Milky Way was added later in Photoshop. You can get the high resolution original here. It’s beautiful anyway.

Think first, share second, people…

I knew it the moment I saw it. It was just too similar to this astronomically impossible “Summer Solstice at the North Pole” image, which is obviously also not what it claims to be, but was also a digitally constructed picture, built in Terragen

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Thankfully, Jesus does share an REAL image of the moon’s shadow on the earth, taken from the International Space Station. Sadly, given the unlimited imagination and lack of astronomical restrictions of the images above, dare I suggest that it’s a little underwhelming:

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Did I really just say that about a photo from the ISS? I think I did.

It’s all good though, because space ‘tog Don Pettit has previously given us this amazing stuff.

Don Pettit ISS startrails shot

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While Chemical Engineer Dr Don Pettit was up on the ISS doing Chemical Engineering stuff, he also did some photography. And wow.

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Those yellow streaks are city lights as the ISS speeds over the surface of the earth, and the blue/white flares are lightning. The white vertical stripes in the distance are star trails.

There’s a bit more to this image than simple long exposure, but fortunately, Doc Pettit has also done a video so that when you’re up in space, you’ll be able to recreate his work. In the meantime, go and have a look at the Flickr album with the rest of his amazing photos.

How fast is the ISS?

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We’ve done International Space Station posts before. Many of them.
There are even photos.

But it’s been a while and so I have grasped the opportunity presented to me by xkcd.com to answer the question: How fast is 8km/s anyway?

8km/s is the speed that the ISS goes – indeed, has to go – in order to continue orbiting the earth. However, because of the unfamiliar units, people find it difficult to visualise exactly how quick it is, especially when shown the serene footage of earth taken by Chris Hadfield and others.

8km/s is equal to 28,800kph or just under 18,000mph. Yes. Go whoosh whoosh.

It’s 10 times faster than a rifle bullet.
Travelling at 8km/s, you could get from Cape Town to Joburg in 2 minutes and 38 seconds. If you wanted to.
Or Cape Town to London in 20 minutes. Pop over for a pint of real beer and some annoying accents.

But the best way of visualising it comes from the what-if crew, with the help of the Proclaimers:

To get a better sense of the pace at which you’re traveling, let’s use the beat of a song to mark the passage of time. Suppose you started playing the 1988 song by The Proclaimers, I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles). That song is about 131.9 beats per minute, so imagine that with every beat of the song, you move forward more than three kilometres.

It would take you about two lines of the chorus to cross the English Channel between London and Paris.

The song’s length leads to an odd coincidence. The interval between the start and the end of I’m Gonna Be is 3 minutes and 30 seconds, and the ISS is moving is 7.66 km/s.
This means that if an astronaut on the ISS listens to I’m Gonna Be, in the time between the first beat of the song and the final lines, they will have traveled just about exactly 1,000 miles.

And that being the case, they’d have every excuse to fall down at my door.

Above us, only sky…

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…well, that and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who continues to provide us with amazing photos of the earth, taken from the International Space Station and shared via twitter.

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Yesterday, he gave us this gem of a a rather barren looking Western Cape, with a bit of Northern Cape at the top right and a bit of Eastern Cape at the bottom. (Because this image is “sideways”, South is left here.)

Looks like a lovely day in the Mother City (as it was), but Cape Agulhas is hidden under that little blanket of white cloud. Still, hardly get the red wine in and light the fire kind of weather, although you’re always more than welcome to do that if you want to.

Rugby or…

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While the rest of Cape Town was glued to Newlands or to their TVs for the start of the Stormers v Cheetahs game, the kids and I were out in the back garden watch the International Space Station flying over the Mother City:

This was a 30 second exposure (which means that the streak across the sky is 233km long) with a bit of luck as the clouds parted to allow a clear shot.

By the time you’ve sighted it and lined up the shot, you only get one go per ISS pass, but you readers don’t get to see the 74 failures that it takes to get just the odd one or two right.