space, from the ground

March 3, 2011 5:38 AM

Passage of the International Space Station and Discovery, taken on February 28th 2011 at 17:58UT from the area of Weimar, Germany. The shooting equipment is described in detail in this page. (Flash 10 required)
posted by DU (22 comments total)

Amazing. The stereographic video is unbelievable.
posted by knapah at 5:41 AM on March 3, 2011

Wow, that is incredible. I'm surprised the 3D view was so easy for me to achieve.
posted by Think_Long at 5:52 AM on March 3, 2011

I wasn't able to view the 3D. I somehow lost my magic eye.

Also, while watching the first video I kept hearing Blue Danube in my head.
posted by DU at 5:56 AM on March 3, 2011 [2 favorites]

Since the two sides of the stereo image are so far apart, it's easier to cross your eyes than to defocus.
posted by clorox at 6:05 AM on March 3, 2011

Anyone who wants to go spot the ISS (and other satellites) themselves should mosey over to Heavens Above, enter your location and it will give precise predictions for various satellites and other bodies, we've been having some beautiful ISS passes over Europe lately and I've got plenty of people up to speed with how to go spot it!
posted by nfg at 6:19 AM on March 3, 2011

Since the two sides of the stereo image are so far apart, it's easier to cross your eyes than to defocus.

Nah. I did it by defocusing and had no problem at all. Just move your head back.
posted by empath at 6:29 AM on March 3, 2011

How did he do the 3d, btw? It's not the explanation page.
posted by empath at 6:30 AM on March 3, 2011

Ahh... I loves me some Meade Schmidt-Cassegrains. So drool-worthy.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 6:36 AM on March 3, 2011

I was wondering about the 3D too. I suspect they are just time-offsets from the same stream of data. The object is (apparently) rotating as it goes around the Earth. Give one eye information that's 1s (or whatever) behind the other eye and it's what you would have seen had you looked up. And had Superman eyes.
posted by DU at 6:38 AM on March 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

empath - For videos where something is moving in a relatively straight line at a steady speed you can just play one eye a few frames behind the other. I don't know if it needs any more detailed calculation as to how many frames. But since the station doesn't change its shape you can use the same video lagging a few frames from itself to achieve 3d. You could do the same thing with a video of the ground shot from an airplane.
posted by Phantomx at 6:39 AM on March 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

Man, my monitor is really dusty.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:16 AM on March 3, 2011

You can also follow @twisst on the Twitterz, and it will tweet you with the time of ISS passes for your locale. It's pretty slick.
posted by norm at 7:18 AM on March 3, 2011 [2 favorites]

Fuck yeah science!
posted by Threeway Handshake at 8:22 AM on March 3, 2011

This is AWESOME! Thanks for the ISS twitter tip norm (pulling my celestron off the shelf now and planning a trip out of this light polluted city to give a viewing a shot!)...
posted by mctsonic at 8:26 AM on March 3, 2011

I have non-autoguided, forkmount Meade of approximately the same size (a 2010 made in the 1980s) and it is a feat of near superhuman scale to have accomplished this. His dired uses what is known as a GEM (german equatorial mount), generally seen as the new hottness in aftermarket upgrades.

I dig the r/c handpaddle thingy somehow baling-wired into the setup.
posted by mwhybark at 8:57 AM on March 3, 2011

Zounds! Nice.
posted by nj_subgenius at 9:34 AM on March 3, 2011

I really enjoyed exploring Thierry's site... what an amazing hobby he has
posted by aesacus at 11:01 AM on March 3, 2011

Amateur skywatching nerds can also follow @Aurora_alerts for notifications of increases in aurora activity.
posted by norm at 11:32 AM on March 3, 2011

(Flash 10 required)

That's actually not true, there is a DivX download.

The 3D thing is really cool. I wasn't able to tell where the shuttle was in the 2D version but it was really clear in 3D (you're seeing the bottom of the shuttle)
posted by delmoi at 12:25 PM on March 3, 2011

Since the two sides of the stereo image are so far apart, it's easier to cross your eyes than to defocus.

You have to cross your eyes. Crosseyed and defocused 3D are different. They have the images swapped. They won't work using the other technique. The cool thing is that youtube actually lets you select a 3D mode for your videos, so you can do whichever one is easier for you.
posted by delmoi at 12:30 PM on March 3, 2011

This is just about the most awesome thing I have ever seen on the Internet.
This guy is spying on a satellite!
The ISS is moving at 27,000km/h, and it is 350km away, and he takes video of it through his telescope.
When he initially moved the scope manually with the remote controller, it all moved too quickly, so he and his mate wrote software to automagically drive the scope motors to follow a dot in a video viewfinder scooting across the screen.
I suspect this is better than anything NASA has (remember the kerfuffle over trying to get video of some shuttle damage the flight after the Columbia burned up), but even if not, they probably achieved it for a 10,000th of the cost.
posted by bystander at 10:22 PM on March 3, 2011

Thanks for the link. I got a little emotional seeing this in stereo. I don't think I've ever been able to do a "magic eye" trick in my life, and doing it for the first time with a man-made object in space was pretty moving for me. Combine that with what we've seen of STS-133 so far--lifting out of the atmosphere, gazing at it from the Earth, getting to see it dock and finally realizing that there are people in orbit up there, rocketing above us at 27,000 km/h, and I'm left overwhelmed and inspired. Well done, humans.
posted by therewolf at 10:05 PM on March 4, 2011