A farewell view of Space Shuttle Discovery

This evening in twilight (sun at -8 degrees altitude) we had a last pass of the "dynamic duo" Space Shuttle Discovery STS-133 and the International Space Station (ISS).

After it's landing tomorrow late afternoon, Discovery will be retired.

The two were well visible in a still bright blue sky, with Orion just visible. They sailed under Orion through Lepus, the Shuttle leading 37.4 seconds (about 19 degrees at culmination) in front of the ISS.

Below is one of the images I shot, using the EF 2.8/24mm lens at 4 second exposure, 200 ISO. The Shuttle is the trail on the left, ISS on the right:

click image to enlarge

Several other European observers reported a water-dump, visible as a "comet tail" behind the Shuttle. I didn't see it from Leiden though, likely because the sky was still too bright.

The ISS and Space Shuttle Discovery STS-133

Space Shuttle Discovery STS-133 undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday, and some 6 hours later made two passes visible from my locality.

The first pass was at 18:48 local time (CET) in very deep twilight, with the sun only 4 degrees under the horizon. This meant the sky was still bright blue. A crescent moon was visible (with the ISS passing only a few degrees away from it), but almost no stars.

Nevertheless both ISS and STS-133 were well visible by the naked eye around culmination: the Shuttle was about 5 to 6 degrees in front of the ISS and slightly fainter.

A second pass, this time in a dark sky, was on an extremely low elevation of 12 degrees at 19:25:30 UTC. Yet due to the very clear sky, they were well visible by the naked eye again, truely at rooftop level:

click image to enlarge

In the image, the two trails overlap at their ends, creating one long trail. A difference in brightness shows where the ISS trail ends.

The Shuttle and ISS were 7.27 seconds apart, at a distance of 2.5 degrees, with the Shuttle leading. This corresponds to 54.5 km separation in reality.

At the deep twilight passage, I used my Canon EOS 450D, laptop and "EOS Camera Movie Record" software to record a short movie (below), showing the crescent moon and the ISS passing near it, low in the west. The Shuttle was still too faint to be seen at that time, brightening to naked eye brightness only when it was closer to culmination.