A fabulous new photo was acquired yesterday by Marco Langbroek, an amateur astro-photographer living in Leiden, NL. Marco’s done some excellent work in the past couple years, capturing images of ATV, Envisat and Phobos-Grunt. Now? It’s Metop-B! Thanks, Marco, for sharing!

(Click on photo for full size)

Metop-B imaged in orbit 19 Sep 2012 Credit/Copyright: M. Langbroek

Metop-B imaged in orbit 19 Sep 2012 Credit/Copyright: M. Langbroek

Marco wrote:

Hi Daniel,

Attached a picture I took this evening, in a partly cloudy sky, of ESA’s new
MetOp-B satellite launched on September 17th. In the picture, it is passing through Lyra (brightest star is Vega).

Near the right end of the MetOp-B trail, you can see a very faint second trail
going diagonally up (if you look very carefully). That is an old Russian rocket
stage from the Kosmos 1410 launch in 1982. The streaks in the upper right corner are clouds.

Photo taken from the centre of Leiden, the Netherlands, on 19 Sep 2012 at
20:44:27 UTC. 10-second exposure with a Canon EOS 60D + EF 2.5/50mm Macro lens, 1000 ISO.

Cheers,

— Marco