Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

• Mon, 14:55: (heads down finishing a big IoT feature)
• Mon, 15:12: Watching The (Hovering) Watchers https://t.co/c46o1n6ehV
• Mon, 16:45: (it occurs to me that George Michael singing Belle and Sebastian, Hue and Cry, and Everything But The Girl would be an excellent album)
• Mon, 16:46: Such good music. The 1960s channeled through the 2010s. http://t.co/eDHE8QUtJA
• Mon, 16:49: Welcome To The League Of The Odd. Motto: "We can't even".
• Mon, 17:51: RT @the_pc_doc: Sorry PR folks, but if I responded to every PR email I got (even with just a 'no thanks') that would then be my full-time j…
• Mon, 18:07: (TTIP petition at the door. Chap most surprised that I knew what he was talking about...)
• Mon, 18:12: Remember that you're all part of the Legion Of The Odd. Because there's going to be something on the internet you can't even.
• Mon, 19:29: "Rewritten by machine on new technology." The Buggles predict the cloud...
• Mon, 19:30: ("Pictures came and broke your heart, put the blame on node.js")

( Read more... )

So a Dragon just launched, heading to the ISS. Luckily for us in the UK, we're in a period of bright ISS passes - and that means we were able to see Dragon and its Falcon second stage pass over the UK shortly after lift-off. Not only that but the solar panel shrouds had just been released as Dragon came over, so there not one, not two but four bright objects in a tight cluster.

Putney is not the best place in the world for astronomical photography, but I figured it was worth a try. So I went up on the roof with my DSLR and a 300mm lens manually focused on infinity. Sadly there was a lot of atmospheric lensing, it having been the hottest day of the year so far here in London - so I wasn't able to take any good photos. With a bit of Lightroom processing, here's my best shot:



The two fainter dots above and below the capsule and booster pair are the solar panel covers.

Low Earth Orbit and Putney, London
April 2015