Space Mission
Orion from my backyard (not tonight, obviously)
No, not the iPhone, but rather the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5. 15 second exposure, rather surprised it came out this well — only slightly adjusted the white and black levels on this one.
The Lumix has a 10x optical zoom which I quite like, but it proved next to useless with my amateur astronomy efforts to capture the Pleiades:
Oh damn you, rotating Earth! Same for anything longer than a 15 second exposure.
Now, our neighbors down at the Lick Observatory in the hills above San Jose, THEY have some serious zoom:
That’s the International Space Station transiting the moon. It crossed the disk of the moon in just half a second — now there’s some good timing.
And here’s a picture of the ISS along with the Space Shuttle Atlantis in front of the Sun:
Oooh, I cannot convince my TZ5 to photograph the stars yet, must keep trying :)