I was incredibly fortunate this evening as I was able to capture the International Space Station and Space Shuttle Atlantis as they passed over Byers Canyon. Adding to the image was the fact that the shuttle had undocked from the ISS earlier in the day, but was still in the same orbit, thus creating the two individual light trails.
I had been planning to shoot something like this for some time, but the ISS never seemed to cooperate--whenever I thought about shooting it, it would only be visible along the horizon if at all. So I happened to check its upcoming orbits last week and, sure enough, there were going to be several days with evening orbits over Grand County. I used Heavens Above to figure out where and when the ISS would be --it is a great site to determine when the ISS or other satellites are going to be passing over your location.
Now that I knew it would be very visible, I just needed to decided where to shoot from. My first thought was to set up and shoot from a hill just outside of Granby, but the more I thought about it, that wasn't going to be as interesting a photo as it could be.
My next thought was to go somewhere around Lake Granby, but I still thought there was something better. Then I remembered I had been trying to come up with something different to photograph in Byers Canyon, west of Hot Sulphur Springs. This was the perfect opportunity.
Armed with my photo gear and my printout with all of the pertinent details from Heavens Above, I headed out to find a location in the canyon where I could show the amazing rock features with the light trails from the spacecraft. My first pass through the canyon yielded three or four possibilities. I soon realized there was a problem however--with the way the canyon winds, I had no reference as to where exactly the ISS would be coming from.
Fortunately, as it grew darker, I could start to make out some of the stars that I could use as reference points from the sky chart I had. But I was still worried about where exactly the light trails would be in relation to the canyon. I stopped and started to set up in the location that I thought would work, but the more I looked at it, the more uneasy I became that it wouldn't yield a good photo.
So I moved on to another location, pondered, then moved on to one last location. At this point I had less than 15 minutes before the ISS would be passing over, so I decided to make the best of this spot. My plan was to try and shoot with two cameras to double my chances of getting a useable image. I set both up, tinkered with how I had each framed, then waited.
Suddenly I noticed a faint light crossing the sky about 30 to 45 degrees to the east of where I thought I should be seeing a light. I basically freaked out and tried to get the cameras moved to catch it before it went out of view. My tripod fell over, I reset the cameras and tried to click off a frame. I was frazzled and was letting loose with quite a string of curses.
What had gone wrong? Was I really that far off on my set up? Frustrated and cold, I decided to start packing up. Glancing once more to the sky, I noticed a very bright point of light appearing above the canyon wall, then shortly after that, a second bright light. I hadn't missed them, it was some other satellite I had seen! I scrambled to get my gear out of the car and get it reset before the space station and shuttle were out of site. I was able to get one 30-second shot off, which is shown above, before they were gone.
It was well worth the effort and difficulties.
goo, goo g'joob
