Endeavour Docked At ISS Casts Gorgeous Shadow.

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Endeavour is back on the ground, but while it was taking its ultimate voyage, it spent some time docked on the International Space Station.  Not one to waste and opportunity to take gorgeous pictures,  Dani Caxete snapped some captures of the craft casting a gorgeous shadow against our solar system’s star.

Bad Astronomy:

You can now see the ISS much better (along with a sunspot – note that spot below the ISS is roughly the size of the Earth!); Endeavour is the long fuzzy bump on the top of the horizontal bar on the upper right going between the two sets of solar panels.

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It’s funny: I know the math. At the distance of the ISS over the ground (350 km), the human eye has just enough resolution to see the space station as more than a dot. Maybe a very slightly elongated dot. Through binoculars you should be able to detect the solar panels, and through a good telescope far more detail is apparent.

A spacecraft docked. A sunspot the size of Earth. What  a great picture.