Boeing Starliner

[Littleguy80]

This evening I was fishing with my Dad and my cousin. As my cousin and I sat talking by the lake, I spotted the ISS rising. I pointed it out to him. He was really impressed to be seeing it. With ISS reaching the zenith, we both noticed a fainter object that appeared to be following the ISS. I speculated that it could be a capsule on its way to dock with the ISS, remembering the Dragon capsule had been observable during its approach to the ISS. A Barn Owl then flew across the field providing another happy distraction as part of the evening.

At home, I started Googling to see what it was we had seen. Just as I was reading about the Boeing Starliner being on approach to the ISS, SkySafari popped up a notification to say that the ISS was rising. I ran downstairs, grabbed my 80mm refractor and APM UFF 30mm eyepiece. A couple of minutes later, as I stood outside, I saw the ISS beginning to appear. Through the eyepiece I couldn't see anything follow it. Similarly, naked eye I could only see the bright ISS on its own. However, as the ISS climbed, I realised that there a small bright point next to slightly rectangular appearing ISS. Instead of splitting stars, I was splitting space craft with my telescope! It became more obvious the higher they were. Based on tweets from Boeing around that time, the Starliner was about 200m from the ISS at this point. I kept following them until they disappeared behind the roof. A completely unexpected but really fun observation!

[Epick Crom]

Wow, that is amazing! Thanks for sharing 👍

[Stu]

Amazing indeed Neil, that must have been great fun! 👍👍

[Captain Scarlet]

Superb, well done!

[Alan White]

Good catch Neil 😉

Sorry it had to be done…. Watching space craft can be quite something, 
I recall watching a SpaceX deployment of Starlink satellites, which was amazing to be able to see.

We are living in quite amazing times.