This afternoon Luca Parmitano (ESA) and Andrew Morgen (NASA) astronauts conducted a spacewalk, part of a series of EVA’s planned to repair the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). I had a very promising flyby at an elevation of 85° between 17:25-17:30 and I calculated that the spacewalk should be ending by making their ways back to the Quest Airlock.

 

 

Sadly they were already inside the airlock by the time the flyby occurred. We can see the Canadarm 2, which is a robotic arm and Andrew Morgen made most of his journey back to the airlock shortly before on top of that.

Shame they were inside already, these are super rare events and one needs to be extremely lucky to have even the opportunity. Not screwing it up on my side is the other key element (lol).

Spacewalking astronauts? Maybe next time..

But I have to admit, that the experience was very unique. I have seen and experienced a couple of amazing events and rare moments during my photography related to the space station, but this was one of those rare ones. I tuned on to youtube to watch the live coverage of the spacewalk. I was watching it with one eye and in the same time focusing on the setup, accuracy during alignments, focusing etc.
I was really excited about it, because I could not judge if Luca will still be out of not, whilst Andrew Morgen just made it to the airlock 5-10 minutes before flyby. I think I missed Luca by 5 minutes, but the fact that I was listening the conversation between ground control and the spacewalkers whilst seeing ISS rising from west was priceless.

I was struggling with keeping the bright spot (ISS) in the middle of my Telrad’s circle, but the whole thing felt surreal.

 

 

What could I identify on my latest International Space Station photos?

 

And these days I started using my Lego ISS model to replicate some of the event on the Space Station. This is how I think the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer repair works happened.

 

Equipment
Skywatcher 10″ Flextube dobson
Zwo ASI224MC camera
TeleVue 2.5x powermate
Baader IR-Pass filter

02/12/2019