subject: view from Earth -- view from space!
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http://img5.imageshack.us/img5…wfromearthviewfromspc.jpg
This is a continuation of the earlier observation of an STS-119 EVA(2nd spacewalk of the mission): A bright reflection of one or both of the white-suited spacewalkers.
A view from Space at the same moment as I captured the situation from Earth.
That with only a few seconds time uncertainty!
We see a view from the helmet-cam of spacewalker Steve Swanson.
He sees colleague Joe Acaba working a little lower and next to him at the truss with
the sickle of the Earth at the background. This is actually the departing
daylight which I see from the ground as the twilight in the west. The pass was reasonable
deep in the twilight, with the Earth shade already considerably rising into the East. (35°)
The darkness were I'm standing in, while shooting the Earth-bound image, is the dark area
below right in the picture seen from Space. The astronauts are working at the Earth facing
side, and we see the rectangular shaped back of the white spacesuite of Acaba reflecting the
sunlight, which I see as the bright spot obviously tilted on the general ISS structures in the telescope-image.
How was I'm able to find this moment in the video recordings? Very easy: I took the point of
sunset and the few minutes later showed groundtrack to see were the ISS was. I then calculated
the time back from the sunset moment,which is the same as the point the ISS departs into the Earth
shade,as seen from the ground!
With the addition of the last processed frame in negative, the obviously
tilted position of the detail represending the spacewalker is even more impressive, especially for someone
familar with the view of the station. We now see a better view on the entire P3 truss, with the
Solar Alpha Rotary Joint(SARJ). I think this composition provides a great technical insight on a situation
captured in a fraction of a second passing with a speed of 28000 km/h!
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Ralf Vandebergh
