HST: mag 1.1

[yeti monster]

Thanks to HA, I was aware of a 19:30 pass by Hubble this evening.

I headed up to the helideck to check the conditions, clear to the west, north and east. Perfect, save for a few straggling clouds.

Collecting the 20x60s from the control room I headed back up. There were a few Chinese crew members, taking an after dinner stroll so I showed them Venus and Mars, as well as the moon, just breaching the horizon, a glorious, vivid, almost blood orange colour. I had a brief look at these myself and at saturn, setting low in the west whilst I waited for 19:30 to tick around.

I settled onto a short set of steps, to aviod LP from the helideck lights and patrolled the WNW sky. Sure enough, a faint "star" appeared. Raising the binoculars to my eyes I soon saw that it was moving, here it is then the Hubble Space Telescope!

HST became brighter as it rose into the sky, I was able to follow it the entire pass as it flew passed Ursa Major and Draco. Almost losing balance as I twisted to follow the target.

Finally HST started to fade in the high eastern sky. I finished with a brief look at the now well risen moon, before returning the binoculars to the control room, a very happy chappy.

[lunator]

YM

Good catch

Well done on seeing Hubble. I haven't tried this yet.

Cheers

Ian

[yeti monster]

I'm fortunate in being in the tropics to observe HST, which I don't believe is visible extra tropically due to its orbit.

[abumuhannadh]

didn't see (didn't actually look) that the HST in Heavensabove stands for Hubble Space Telescope. i only check Iridiums and ISS (of which a mag -3.2 was seen at my place last night)

will check out HST now

[callisto]

Well done