Apart from the ISS, yesterday evening I captured an Iridium satellite flare on camera – only the second time I managed this. The Iridium flares can be predicted to the second and I was not quite sure if this would appear behind or over the tree, but 30° elevation seem to be slightly above the maple. Those flares happen because the satellite is briefly illuminated by the sun, fading in for only a few seconds and then fading out again while travelling along at roughly the speed of the ISS. If you want to look for the ISS, Iridium flares and maybe other satellites appearing in the night sky, check out the excellent tracking site Heavens Above!

I guess this might be an ornamental peach or something similar.

I guess the colour might be salmon, but it’s hard to tell.

The wood pigeons love to use the balconies as a launch platform,
but sometimes they also like to have a little stroll around :-).

That little tree in front of the school really exploded last week.

Opening day, April 7th :-).

This happened entirely by chance… while watching the Weekly Space Hangout the ISS was mentioned and I had completely forgotten that tonight was of the first good opportunities to view a pass around here. About ten minutes before I set up the new camera quickly – it was the first time I used it to capture the ISS and while the processing was a bit of a nightmare with too many pixel errors, I think the result worked out fine. This is a single 120-second exposure with a Canon Powershot SX1 running CHDK.

I can’t remember what those were called, but they grow in two places around here…