It’s been an amazing couple of weeks for amateur astronomers. Last Sunday, one of their ilk spied the super-secret X37-B space shuttle making the rounds, and this Sunday another has imaged the ISS crossing paths with Jupiter—during the daytime!
https://gizmodo.com/amateur-astronomers-spot-super-secret-x-37b-space-shutt-5545562
Of course, Jupiter is about 356 million miles from Earth, and the ISS is roughly 250 miles, but this still makes for an incredibly cool little image. Did I mention it was taken at 9:00 a.m. yet? Well, it was.
Then there’s this next image, showing the military’s X37-B in orbit. We knew amateur astronomers had done this already, but last weekend we lacked any kind of media. Well here it is:
It’s a bit grainy, so the rudimentary graphic serves to help decipher what’s going on in the image. We’re looking top-down, with the “flyswatter” solar panel extended and visible.
And here’s Jupiter, Europa, Io and Ganymede during the day, just for kicks:
Nice job, fellas. [Universe Today via Discover]
