Thanks to Ralf Vandebergh for another excellent image of ATV! Ralf has captured a number of in-flight images of ATV-3 so far and this time he’s acquired Edoardo Amaldi attached to the ISS (click on the ‘Continue reading’ link below the image to read Ralf’s comments).

ATV-3 seen attached to ISS from ground Credit: R. Vandebergh

ATV-3 seen attached to ISS from ground Credit/Copyright: R. Vandebergh

Ralf wrote:

We have had much luck tracking ATV on its way to the ISS: good weather during the entire trajectory from an often-cloudy country, The Netherlands. But since docking, the weather’s turned cloudy. Still, I wanted to have a docked image taken in the same window as the docking. This succeeded finally on 2 April. Although the atmosphere looked relatively steady, there were some problems with internal turbulence in the open (Newtonian-type) telescope. Additionally, you notice the recent reboosts of the station to an altitude of over 400 km in the resolution. I have taken ISS images at altitudes of 350 or even 340 km. An experienced photographer immediately notices the difference of 50 km altitude, and I wonder if the crew notices much of this difference. However, the resulting image shows some nice details so it will appear on my website for sure.

— Ralf Vandebergh