Starship Asterisk*

by **tyler** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 8:58 pm

SF Bay

by **dsale** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 4:37 pm

I will venture to say it is part of the Arctic Ice cap and the northern most portion of Canada. Main reason for this is the fact I see no vegetation, it looks like the land is covered with snow and ice.

by **alter-ego** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 5:50 am

Check this out. I made a composite picture of the ISS POD and Google Earth. I used the ISS location and time to set the camera position, and I set the look angles using the Earth's horizon and the Sun's reflection in the ocean. Iv'e done this with Yuri's Planed APOD a couple years ago and it works well. I added Point Nemo to the composite, but it looks like the framed POD just missed it.

http://picasaweb.google.com/okubet/APOD ... 5964306050

I flipped the APOD over for convenience, and for a more natural perspective.

So my best guess is "Southern Pacific" is the expected answer

by **BikerMike** » Wed Mar 17, 2010 8:42 am

BikerMike wrote:Now, I may be blind in one eye and can't see out of the other but I can't see anything that would indicate a definitive land mass. So I'm going to take a WAG and say it's the southern Pacific Ocean with the possibility of the Antarctic in the lower left corner. Probably nowhere near there.

Does this mean I get the prize as I was the first to say "souther Pacific Ocean"!!!

(

)

by **alter-ego** » Tue Mar 16, 2010 5:00 am

Bingo! Point Nemo is the most meaningful description I've heard yet for the POD "landscape." If my stated ISS position is correct, Nemo's location is ~700 miles from the nadir (ground track position), so in the picture, that would put it about in the clear zone below the ISS.

by **hstarbuck** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 6:41 am

Answering my own question from above...not too far off!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_of_inaccessibility

The oceanic pole of inaccessibility (48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W / 48.8767°S 123.3933°W / -48.8767; -123.3933 (Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility)), is the place in the ocean that is farthest from land. It lies in the South Pacific Ocean, 2,688 km (1,670 mi or 1,451 NM) from the nearest lands: Ducie Island (part of the Pitcairn Islands) in the north, Motu Nui (part of the Easter Islands) in the north-east, and Maher Island (near the larger Siple Island, off the coast of Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica) in the south. Chatham Island lies farther west, and Southern Chile in the east. This location is also referred to as "Point Nemo".

by **hstarbuck** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 5:25 am

alter-ego wrote:2000 miles west of S. Chile coast, Lat. 41 28' S, Long. 113 14' W

After plugging these coordinates into Google Earth I have to say.....could the ISS have been any further from land? Really....too much!

by **alter-ego** » Sun Mar 14, 2010 10:05 pm

After correcting a timing / input error I made for the APOD picture, the corrected ISS location is ~460 miles southwest of my earlier stated position:

At 2:04UT, the ISS is 2000 miles west of S. Chile coast, Lat. 41 28' S, Long. 113 14' W, 1000 miles south of Easter Island, and 2250 miles north of Antarctica. Given all times are rounded to the nearest minute, I estimate the positional uncertainty to be ~200 miles.

Also, By comparing two pictures of known locations, one taken by the shuttle, and one taken by the ISS, I've verified that both shuttle and ISS camera clocks are synchronized to <1min. Ok, so I tend to get caught up in details.

Since I drove so many nails into this coffin, I decided to add one more..hopefully the last one.

by **Chris Peterson** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:19 pm

DavidLeodis wrote:I'm very surprised that the ISS Team have not provided a definte answer by now!

Not sure who the "ISS Team" is, but it may well be that nobody with a direct involvement in producing this image is even aware of our discussion.

I note that the question is "Can anyone identify the landscape behind the space station?" (my emphasis on the "landscape") which seems to imply there is land there, though I know some contributors say there is no land.

As RJN pointed out much earlier, he wrote the APOD and was simply assuming that somebody here would figure out what part of the Earth the ISS was over. He didn't know. So I wouldn't read anything at all into the word choice of "landscape".

by **alter-ego** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:06 pm

Thanks for that response, David. It's was a moral booster.

That snippet of land you mentioned is what I stubbornly clung to. That little bit of "land" is what originally convinced me that the time-stamp time zone was NOT UT. It wasn't until I discovered the ISS orbital path without assuming any specific time zone for the time stamp that I also discovered the time zone was UT! I was totally surprised. The very last thing I discovered was that the time stamps in the ground track calcs was UT, and agreed with the picture time stamps to the minute!

by **DavidLeodis** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 1:32 pm

I'm very surprised that the ISS Team have not provided a definte answer by now!

. I note that the question is "Can anyone identify the landscape behind the space station?" (my emphasis on the "landscape") which seems to imply there is land there, though I know some contributors say there is no land. I do think there may be land below thin cloud in the just left of centre area near the top of the image, but I accept that I may be wrong on that.

by **Quizzer** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 9:51 pm

I actually didn't look at the coordinates my tracker gave me, just looked at the map, noticed, south pacific, relatively south on my map (I blame bad map projection

), picture shows white -> so it must be Antarctica.
On closer inspection (ty Chris) I already concluded that it was too south for the iss to get there and it was only clouds, but ah well, my main object was to get a global position.

In any case, thank you for confirming my method and general conclusion, lets put this thread to rest

.

by **alter-ego** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 8:51 pm

And the answer is: ISS sub-orbital position = 1800 miles west of souther Chile, Lat 37 38' S, Long 106 14' E.
Time = 2:04 UT
View = Westerly, all ocean and clouds
Distance from Antarctica = 2500 miles, south of ISS.

First, I pinned down another photo in the ISS fly-around sequence: S130E012150, Time Stamp = 2/20, 01:35 UT. ISS sub-orbital location = Timor Sea, Australia, Lat 12 04' S, Long 127 54' E. The view is toward the Victoria River delta in northern Australia.

Next, I used the time stamps for 2 other pictures and then calculated new ISS postions from the Timor Sea Location, and verified landmarks in the pictures with Google:
S130E012092
Time = 7 minutes BEFORE Timor Sea (01:28 UT)
Location = Distintive and identifiable coastline of Binh Dinh, Vietnam, Lat 9 33' N, Long 112 24' E

S130E012451
Time = 7hr 44min AFTER Timor Sea (09:19 UT)
Location = South Africa ****Description given with picture AND very close to ISS calculated postion (Shuttle is not in exact ISS location now)****

Solution to ISS quiz location fits excellently well within the ISS STS-130 picture sequence AND it meets required condition to be minutes from the terminator

It looks like Quizzer was on the right track, but somehow missed the mark - maybe the orbital Elset was wrong. The ISS location actually is far from Antarctica. Good job though Quizzer.

I feel like an idiot. I was bitten hard by my assumption / belief about seeing perceptible landform. That was plum wrong. You guys (Chris) were right that said there was only clouds. To my chagrin, I ended up identifying both locations and arrival times! Gees, I followed an arduous, tail-chasing path. I had the answer days ago by just using the picture's time stamp. I wish I had beleived it...
Well, we live and learn.

by **Chris Peterson** » Wed Mar 10, 2010 6:20 pm

geckzilla wrote:You guys may as well be guessing the ISS is sitting on top of one of the pyramids of Giza.

That's for sure. I'd say there is no consensus at all on where the ISS was. There's some reasonable analysis based on the orbit and other images taken around the same time, which- given that no land is obviously present in the image- seems to provide the most rational suggestion.

by **geckzilla** » Wed Mar 10, 2010 6:10 pm

You guys may as well be guessing the ISS is sitting on top of one of the pyramids of Giza.

by **happydestiny** » Wed Mar 10, 2010 1:50 pm

My guess - over South America with Columbia behind station and Panama in upper left corner.

by **franiu** » Tue Mar 09, 2010 7:55 pm

My guess is: the landscape below the ISS is somewhere along the Southern Coast of Australia.

franiu

by **Chris Peterson** » Tue Mar 09, 2010 1:37 am

Jay wrote:That said, your earlier comment about the angle of incidence for taking photos toward the horizon would make it very easy to include Antartica in an image when the space shuttle was repositioning itself away from the ISS.

How so? The shuttle is in an orbit with the same inclination as the ISS. When it's leaving the ISS, it never goes into a substantially higher orbit. So its view is the same as that of the ISS, and that really doesn't extend as far south as Antarctica.

by **Jay** » Tue Mar 09, 2010 1:18 am

Chris Peterson wrote: ++little snip++ The only part of Antarctica that stands a chance of not being over the horizon from the ISS is the Antarctic Peninsula, which might just be visible in the far south when the ISS is passing near southern South America. That said, however, I am unable to find a single image of Antarctica made from the ISS, despite the thousands that are available online, and which show most of the rest of the world (at latitudes lower than about ±60°).

I don't think there are alot of people living in Antartica who would be going online to look at images taken of their neighborhood from outer space.

That said, your earlier comment about the angle of incidence for taking photos toward the horizon would make it very easy to include Antartica in an image when the space shuttle was repositioning itself away from the ISS.

by **alter-ego** » Mon Mar 08, 2010 6:42 pm

Amir - Hats off to you for struggling through that excercise.

by **Amir** » Mon Mar 08, 2010 12:39 pm

wow,i didn't know how boring it would be, alter-ego, it's cool though!
i spent a lot of time searching for the cloud pattern that matches with the one in the image, but (1) since those patterns are changing very quickly, you have to find the image which has a close timing & that is, lets not say impossible, but so hard actually. & (2) searching for the patterns in such a big images will be extremely hard & boring!
but, i guess i found something very similar (on 20th Feb day at 2:55) near Australia, but i'm not so sure.

by **alter-ego** » Mon Mar 08, 2010 4:59 am

This may be my last post on this as I'm starting to go in circles (no pun intended). I am much less sure of my earlier statements as I now have four candidate solutions based on only simple criteria:

- Two in Northern Hemisphere (Maine / Nova Scota, Italy)
- Two in Southern Hemisphere (South Australia, Western Australia)

I have the Google Earth / ISS ground track pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/okubet/APODMar32010#

In order to arrive at these locations, I've gone over 17 ISS terminator crossings from separation (2/19) to my observation in Seattle area (2/20). The Great Lakes don't give as good a fit, and Lake Champlain doesn't work. The closest ISS approach(es) to Champlain (southern tip, 51 deg lat) occured in darkness so the sunlit APOD background cannot be Champlain.

Barring coastline / area details (not visible well at all in POD), my interpretation criteria involved:
1. Necessary ISS terminator proximity
2. Coastline crudely parallel to terminator
3. Near-background land in darkness
4. Coastline and far-background (clouds and water) are sunlit

By these criteria and depending on hemisphere, the ISS experienced either a "sunrise" or "sunset" within minutes of when the POD was taken.
**If one could access weather satellite image archives, cloud patterns might pin down the location**

by **BMAONE23** » Mon Mar 08, 2010 1:48 am

It is similar to this image but upside down. Though I can't speak for the apparent lack of sea ice in the bay

by **Richard Bennett** » Mon Mar 08, 2010 12:55 am

The background location is the Hudson Bay region of Northern Canada; Lat about 60 degrees north and Long between 90 and 75 degrees west

by **alter-ego** » Sun Mar 07, 2010 3:25 am

Well, in my biased viewpoint, I'm further convinced the picture is over the Mediterranean, most likely Italy's boot or Sardinia. I personally viewed the ISS / Shuttle early morning on Feb 20 (also a very reasonble terminator condition for solution). Their observed separation was ~15 degrees (approx 100km). The weather was clear as far as the eye could see from Seattle, so I think the large separation between the space crafts and the big difference in weather condtions rules out the Pacific NW. The link below shows the ISS ground track approaching Italy as well as times for local sunrise and when ISS became sunlit. The GE picture shows the terminator as well.

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/8z ... directlink

This remains speculative, but the data supports this scenario as possible solution.

Starship Asterisk*

APOD: The ISS from Above (2010 Mar 03)

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