After writing the previous entry, I grabbed my camera and tripod and headed to a darkish area in Tunney’s Pasture. Once there, I set up my tripod on the hood of my Tracker, located Venus (hard to miss as it was the second brightest thing in the sky) and pointed the camera so that it would have the best chance of the ISS being in frame. And then I waited.

And about half a minute after I expected to see it, there it was – a bright dot zipping along from the northwest on a trajectory to pass between Venus and the Moon.

Someone happened to be walking by where I was taking picture just as it appeared so I pointed it out to them and we watched it for the entire pass.

I took several 30 second exposures and re-aimed the camera once the ISS had moved out of frame.

If you click on any of the pictures, you’ll be able to see a larger version.

The first picture in this entry is an unenhanced image.  The Moon is the bright object at the top of the frame and if you look closely, you can make out the tip of the antenna on my Tracker. The magenta arrows are pointing at the trail made by the ISS as it moved across the sky during the 30 second exposure. Trust me, it’s there.

The second picture in this entry is the same scene, only I’ve adjusted the levels and colour balance so that the trail is visible. The blue-green “fog” is the high altitude clouds that were illuminated by the last rays of the setting sun.

The third picture in this entry is actually chronologically earlier than the other two.  The bright object in this picture is Venus. Again, if you look closely, you can see the trail left by the ISS just below the magenta-coloured arrows. The dark object at the very bottom of the image is the roof rack on my Tracker.