Stimulating Pixels

Last week, I spent roughly three days doing reseach/planning, eight hours driving (split between two road trips) and stood around for another half dozen hours. This was all done in order take to make a single exposure that lasted for 167 seconds and had no chance for a do-over. The subject of all this effort was space shuttle Discovery as she and her crew launched from Kennedy Space Center for mission STS-128.

Here is the result:

As far as I’m concerned, it’s completely worth the effort.

Of course, since the above image was made with a camera sitting on a tripod, I was also able to do some shooting with a telephoto lens for a more traditional liftoff image.

Finally, I had planned to attach my point and shoot camera to the tripod and shoot some video as well, but the crappy flexpod I bought that day fell apart on me. So, I ended up setting the little camera directly on the ground and crossing my fingers. I couldn’t get a clear view of the sky, but figured it was worth a shot anyway. The resulting video falls squarely in the “Happy Accident” category.

(Note: At about 1:50 seconds into the video, the rumble that starts is the sound from engines. It took that long for it to get to where I was shooting from. Prior to that, the all the rocket noise is coming from the audio on the radio. The announcer was obviously much closer.)

To give credit where it’s due:

• Thanks to Dr. T.S. Kelso from celestrak.com for helping make sure I was setup to capture the entire flight path.
• For a great set of notes on shooting launches, visit this page on phototrek.org.
• K4GCC (146.940) retransmission of the NASA audio which you hear in the video.
• M.C. for letting me borrow some additional gear.

I have no idea if this will work, but I’m trying to use Google Maps to figure out what lens I should shoot the Shuttle launch with tomorrow night. Taking data from the awesome celestrack.com AGI Viewer Launch Scenario STS 128 launch I plotted where the shuttle should be when the main engines cut off. You can’t see that point without scrolling, but it’s where the lines the head off to the upper right are pointing.

The other locations are the positions I’m looking to shoot from and Launch Pad 39a where the shuttle will blast off from. By sticking a protractor on the screen, I get the angles of view which I cross reference with either this chart or this tool.

Hopefully, we’ll see how this all pans out tomorrow night.

Just a few quick links that I’ve found useful when trying to figure out details about attending a Space Shuttle launch. (Of course, if you can’t attend, there is always NASA TV streaming on the web.

• NASA Launch Blog – Note: it would be nice if this page auto-updated, but it doesn’t appear to.
• STS-128 Launch blog RSS feed – It looks like this will disappear after the current launch, but new ones should pop up for each launch. They also keep clearing it out which sucks.
• Kennedy Space Center launch viewing ticket info
• NASA list of "off-site" viewing locations
• Article from phototrek.org about launch photography – lots of really good stuff in here.
• Launch info dump from sworld.com.au – Tons of stuff here. To the point of information overload, but it’s worth digging through for specifics.
• Wiki article on STS-128 – There’s one for every mission.
• Awesome looking graphical representation of the launch before it happens – Shows maps of where/when you can see the shuttle from different states. I’m glad there are people out there that can and do make this kind of thing.
• Communication frequency list
• Another frequency list with some additional stuff on it – This one lines up more with what I’ve seen in some other places.
• List of retransmissions in other locations – if you want to tune in from elsewhere.
• My question to Ask MetaFilter about scanners – got confirmation that the ones RadioShack sells are speced to pick up the retransmissions.

These are the frequencies I’ve seen listed for tuning into the shuttle communications prior to launch via HAM repeaters. These are all pulled from the links above, but they are spread out. Just listing them here to make them easier to find.

• 146.880 MHz (FM) – KA9SZX retransmission
• 146.940 MHz (FM) – K4GCC retransmission
• 145.170 MHz (FM) – WA4VME retransmission
• 296.800 MHz (AM) – Air-to-ground & Orbiter to EVA-Suit
• 279.000 MHz (AM) – EVA-Suit-to-EVA-Suit & Orbiter to EVA-Suit
• 243.000 MHz (AM) – Standard UHF Mil emergency Freq.
• 442.6 MHz (UHF) – NASA audio
• AM 1240 and AM 1350 – Local station WMMB. These weren’t broadcasting the launch when I was there, but they are still listed by NASA.

There aren’t that many Shuttle missions left after this one. Here’s the list as it stands right now.

• STS-129 – November 12, 2009 – 4:11PM
• STS-130 – February 4, 2010 – Time TBD
• STS-131 – March 18, 2010 – Time TBD
• STS-132 – May 14, 2010 – Time TBD
• STS-133 – July 29, 2010 – Time TBD
• STS-134 – September 16, 2010 – Time TBD

The last one, STS-134 isn’t certain yet. It has to get budget approval. As it stands right now, either that one or 133, is going to be the last launch of the Space Shuttle program.