Armed with the relevant information, wrapped in a couple of layers to ward off the cold winds which had developed over night I stepped outside around 0530hrs to get ready. The cloud was fairly high towards the East and was also flitting around the Moon to the South, determined that the cloud would not trouble me and would have cleared away by 0627hrs when the ISS was scheduled to pass I set up.

It’s difficult of course to stand with a camera and watch the skies change above you and not attempt a photograph or two, so I started to play with settings in an attempt to capture the Moonlit clouds and the odd star or two that were playing hide and seek with the clouds. I played for a little too long and just before 0600hrs the battery went flat just as the cloud cover increased. I gave it up as a bad job and returned to the house to put the battery on charge, A while later I looked outside, the clouds were clearing and the sky was looking better for the ISS pass.

So grabbing the poorly charged battery I popped back outside, I decided my previous position with the camera was probably wrong and so I moved further down the lane from the house and set up again, the cloud crept in, and I started to doubt I’d see anything. Then as the clouds cleared I spotted the ISS whizzing along, it zoomed over the Moon and headed towards the Pennines, the visibility lasts for such a short time but it’s still an amazing sight.

One curious thing I noticed, there appeared to be two objects zooming along together in close proximity, I’m not sure if there is anything docking with the ISS or is about to leave but when I enlarged part of the trail there was certainly two trails visible – or perhaps it was just the atmospherics which created the effect as there was certainly a lot of moisture about this morning

Oh yes, the title, I wondered what speed the ISS was doing as it arced above me, turns out it averages 17,239.2 mph!

Yesterday I was having problems, nothing serious, but I was struggling to take a photograph to Blip. I took a few photographs on our morning walk but when I looked at them on screen none of them were any good. I took a cobweb, but there was no spider in it and the light wasn’t exciting; I took some shafts of light in the wood, but when I looked at the results it was a dark mush of nothing; my photographs of birds on the wires looked like dots on a string, I decided to wait and see what would happen. Well, nothing happened and I had to go to work. In desperation I took the camera and tripod to work with me, and it was lucky that I did.

I started with a photograph of things close by, so the fields in front of the box with the Pennines in the distance seemed like a good idea for a snap –

Then, a little later I spotted the sky changing nicely as the Sun started to set –

I’d not intended taking landscapes or Sunsets however, earlier in the day there had been a Tweet that the ISS (International Space Station) would be making a bright pass at 2104hrs and so I set the camera up on the tripod and waited, eventually the ISS rose above the factory buildings and I took a photograph. Happy that I finally had a photograph to Blip I stood back to watch the ISS pass overhead, then I spotted Jupiter was just starting to rise above the Pennines and I quickly pointed the camera in that direction –

That would be it for the evening I thought, then the Moon popped up above the hills and I grabbed a couple of lunar shots –

As I’d taken the Moon, a planet, and the ISS that night it felt appropriate to take a few star photographs as well

Finally, the dot…

It’s hard to believe that this tiny dot of light is actually another planet, and not just a tiny little piece of rock, it has a radius 11 times (or so) that of Earth, yet we see just a dot of light*. So the next time you’re outside at night and the sky isn’t either covered with cloud or flooded with light pollution have a look up, that dot of light may just be another World

*okay, you can see more than a dot of light with a telescope, but let’s not be too picky