Space viewing treats for the early birds the next few mornings

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av031/prelaunch/

Some special treats for Canberra insomniacs over the next few mornings (or ordinary people in other parts of the world).

Tomorrow morning (Friday) has an Atlas 5 launch from Cape Canaveral - with the two-hour launch window opening at 11:46 GMT - 4:46am Canberra time.

UPDATE: the launch was scrubbed due to a fuel purge problem. Rescheduled for tomorrow morning - same time minus three minutes for launch window opening. So now you have two reasons to get up early Saturday morning! That has to make it worthwhile right?

The payload is a secure military communications satellite. The Atlas 5 is an interesting launch, with first the four solid rocket boosters separate once exhausted - in two pairs. Then the very large cowling over the payload peels away. This was quite spectacular when the Atlas was used to launch the Mars Curiosity Rover on its way.

You can watch the launch live here:

Watch live streaming video from spaceflightnow at livestream.com

Then on Saturday and Sunday mornings, some long passes of the International Space Station:

Date: Saturday, May 05, 2012 Time: 05:59 AM
Duration: 5 minutes Maximum Elevation: 36°
Approach: 14° above WSW Departure: 10° above NNE

Date: Sunday, May 06, 2012 Time: 05:08 AM
Duration: 3 minutes Maximum Elevation: 79°
Approach: 79° above NE Departure: 10° above NE

This second one should be OK for taking a time-lapse photo as the sky will still be dark-ish. But you’ll need to be shooting as it goes away from you to the west rather than as it comes towards as the eastern sky might be too light for a long exposure. There are some good night passes coming in about a week that will be better – like these ones.

To take these you need a wider angle lens rather than telephoto, a tripod and a cable release. Set the camera on bulb and aperture to very small so the picture doesn’t get overwhelmed with ambient light. In the shots above I included some landscape for a frame of reference, plus Mars and Regulus.
I’ll post about the night-time passes in a few days.