APOD of ISS (05 Mar 2008)

videograham · Post by **videograham** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 7:42 am

Anyone able to identify the part of the earth over which the ISS is in Wednesday's APOD?

Unfortunately there is no coastline, only a couple of mountain ranges. The African or Asian deserts perhaps?

Lucra · Post by **Lucra** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 11:32 am

Had the same question. If one could know the time (UT) the picture was taken it should be possible to to determine the position of ISS. The only time indication I could find is the time the Shuttle undocked from the station but that, I guess, might not be accurate enough.

Luc

BMAONE23 · Post by **BMAONE23** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 6:19 pm

Undocking of the two spacecraft occurred at 3:24 a.m. (CST) on Feb. 18, 2008.

Lucra · Post by **Lucra** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 7:26 pm

At the time of undocking the ISS was halfway between South Africa and Australia (S 27° E 77°) Hope this helps to identify the underlaying landmarks.
Allow for serious errors due to uncertainty in the time the picture was taken.
Since the sun is shining from the left site (at 9h24m UT) the camera points to the south.

kind regards,
Luc

iamlucky13 · Post by **iamlucky13** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 7:40 pm

The fly around takes several hours, if I remember correctly, time to complete an entire orbit or two. I guess at least you can figure out the ground track and follow it around the map looking for anything that might be those huge mountain ranges.

I'm having trouble finding historical ground tracks. I know several sites that will show current or future position of the ISS, but it seems finding out where it was in the past is a little harder.

emc · Post by **emc** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 8:25 pm

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080228.html... according to APOD, ISS orbits every 90 minutes

Here is a nifty ISS tracking site http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/

ta152h0 · Post by **ta152h0** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 9:16 pm

Holly cow, is that the track of a jet stream in the background ? pass the beer !

videograham · Post by **videograham** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 7:50 am

I'm not 100% but on a closer look, there is a feature on the far right-hand side of the image which is similar in shape to the Persian Gulf with the Mediterranean Sea towards the upper left. The only flaw to this idea is that I can't make out the Red Sea, unless I'm mis-interpreting the scale.

Starship Asterisk*

APOD of ISS (05 Mar 2008)

APOD of ISS (05 Mar 2008)

ISS

ISS position