International Space Station - Ralf Vandebergh Photograph From Earth

Photograph used by permission of Ralf Vendebergh

I recently ran across this amazing picture of the International Space Station taken by Ralf Vandebergh. So I went looking for his work on the web. It is fascinating stuff Ralf uses a 10 inch Newtonian telescope with a videocam eyepiece. He manually tracks the ISS and other objects across the sky. Due to atmospheric turbulence (its why stars twinkle), a portion of one image may be clear and another blurry. By judicious combination of various images from the video and that good old standby Photoshop, you can create a nice image. Ralf has one from 21 March 2009 showing an astronaut performing a spacewalk outside the ISS. If you want to compare ISS components with what you see in the images, consult the link. Here are some additional links: Mike Salway’s collection of Ralf’s images. Ralf’s Saturn weather photographs are at Saturn Report A NASA Image entitled “Space Station Construction Visible in Backyard Telescopes” A complete inventory can be found here. You can follow Ralf on Twitter

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