After undocking of Shuttle Discovery from the International Space Station
on 17. of April the space glider had reached a distance of nearly 1.000km.
The artificial satellites are circling the Earth in an orbit of 340km height with
a speed of 27.000km per hour. That's why the ISS only two minutes after Shuttle
Discovery reached it's highest point in the morning skies.
So under these circumstances it was a real challenge to record both objects
near their culmination :
After successful tracking the Shuttle, fast stop of data flow to the mount, change
to orbital data of ISS, start tracking again and immediate manual corrections it
was possible to get the International Space Station into the field of view, too.
In the 240 second widefield exposure parts of the parallel flight paths are visible,
as well as the swiveling mount with telescopes, computers and observation monitor.
See story and pictures on :