space visitor 1

image 2 of this satellite is here: [link]

I was taking more lunar photos tonight, Venus has had unusually good viewing lately, and with the moon being just a sliver, and in a great rotational position too, I wanted to get them together and try to capture the beauty that was my back yard looking North\West

Without knowing it, I captured a visitor while I was happily shooting away, and since it was such an obviously bright and fast object, I did what I could to identify it

I use a program called Starry Night Pro Plus ([link]) and it took me all of about 3 minutes to get the complete lowdown on this fast moving and very bright photo-hijacker ... it was none other than SL-16 R/B … all I did was to look at the moon with the program and then go backwards to the exact second (taken from the EXIF data from the camera) that the photos were taken and there it was zooming across the sky right where it showed up in these 2 photos

I use Starry Night to control my LX200GPS some nights and it’s an amazing program and does a very accurate and intelligent job of controlling the telescope – it has the AutoStar II data library beat several times over – it’s not something that I would ever replace my AutoStar II with, but it’s really nice to have them both for reference, and the Starry Night Pro Plus is the next best thing to being at the scope when the weather is bad – it’s worth checking out (maybe they have a trial version?) for anyone that’s into astronomy and especially anyone with a telescope … OK, enough free advertising for them, it’s just good

About SL-16 R/B …

It is a former Soviet Union satellite and is fairly large, bulky and loaded with dark/light and shiny bits hanging off of it - it has a spin rate of several seconds, so you can see it "flickering" and blinking more than most other satellites that are out right now

It orbits between 842-847km and is VERY fast, even for a satellite … I'm still trying to get complete speed information and other data on it … and trying to find out exactly what this used to do, or maybe still does

It was launched April 23 1994, so it’s almost its 13th birthday - I'll be looking for it on the 23rd and I’ll try to get a B-day shot of it

Online info about it … [link]

Real time tracking … [link] … you don’t need a telescope, or even binoculars if you live somewhere dark to see it … any cheap set of binoculars will give you a great view of it from just about anywhere, even with light pollution – it’s that bright

So … kind of boring pic, nice moon shape with a very bright Venus to the upper left and the satellite – no big deal, but enough to make me interested in it – have fun