A streak of light in the winter sky
12 Dec 2016
A streak of light in the winter sky—not a shooting star, not a jetliner condensation trail glowing in the dark but ... the International Space Station (ISS) flying high over the ITER worksite.
In one single image, the two largest international scientific collaborations ever established are captured: on the ground, the seven-Member, 35-nation ITER collaboration; and 400 kilometres overhead a project bringing together the American, Russian, Japanese, European and Canadian space agencies.
The best time to sight the bright, slow-moving dot that is the ISS is in the hours after sunset and before sunrise—when the station remains sunlit, but the ground and sky are dark. This long-exposure photograph was taken at 6:07 p.m. on Thursday 8 December.
Click here to view the animation.
