APOD: The ISS from Above (2010 Mar 03)

[franiu]

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

franiu

[happydestiny]

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

[geckzilla]

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

[Chris Peterson]

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.

[alter-ego]

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.

[Quizzer]

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 .

[DavidLeodis]

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.

[alter-ego]

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!

[Chris Peterson]

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".

[alter-ego]

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.

[hstarbuck]

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!

[hstarbuck]

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".

[alter-ego]

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.

[BikerMike]

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"!!! ( )

[alter-ego]

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

[dsale]

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.

[tyler]

SF Bay