This extraordinary video clip was recorded at ESA’s Optical Ground Station (OGS) at about 19:05 UTC on 8 October 2014 as the station illuminated the ISS with a 3.6-Watt 532-nm green laser, used for testing next-gen optical communication technologies. The video clearly shows the ISS bathed in green light as it is tracked by the OGS through the 4-minute pass at an altitude of about 420 km.
The OGS is located at the Teide Observatory, Tenerife, Spain, which is operated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias.
The demonstration was conducted as part of ESA’s #SpaceOptics SocialSpace event, 7-8 October.
More photos via https://bit.ly/spaceoptics2014
Credit: IAC/Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias/Daniel López
Discussion: 5 comments
Can someone explain why the ISS is traveling in reverse (backwards) in this video?
What I mean is that, in the video, the top part of the ISS is the ‘front’ of the ISS, but this video shows the station passing overhead in reverse (‘down’ in relation to the video’s orientation).
Either the station had been temporarily rotated 180 degrees, or this video is being played in reverse.
Or perhaps it is, indeed, traveling ‘up’ (forward) in this video and my brain is having difficulty sorting out the proper 3D orientation of the station (due to the low resolution).
Judging by the way the solar arrays block the light reflecting off of the front part of the station, I think I may have been wrong in my initial claim.
I think you got it right! My apologies!
Nope. I’m still confused and second-guessing myself (and apparently talking to myself). I’d still love an official explanation.
Thanks!
I finally got my head around it and figured it out. The ISS is, indeed, traveling forward (up) in the video.
The ends of the solar arrays pointing down and to the right in the video are pointing “down” toward the Earth.
Sorry for this string of comments.
I think you may be misreporting what is going on here. Illuminating the ISS with a 3.7W laser wouldn’t cause any visible effects to observers on the ground, given that every m^2 of the ISS is already receiving ~100 times that much light from the sun (and the laser certainly isn’t focusing all of it’s energy into a 1 m^2 area if it is, as you say, “bathing” the entire ISS).
Rather, I think any colors we see in this video are just the effect of atmospheric dispersions, as evidenced by the fact that they appear most prominently at the beginning of the video, when the ISS is at a low elevation / high air mass.