Satellites .....

..... over Bolton Abbey.

It's been a gorgeous day here in Yorkshire and I've spent most of it working from home. At four this afternoon I decided to head off out and get a bit of fresh air and have a walk in the country.

Just before I set off out there was a knock at the door from the postie, who had a package for me. Inside was a HUGE chocolate cake from the lovely LeeAnne ( Thank you Lovely ). I had a quick taster before I headed of out and it's very chocolatey, I'll be having some for pudding shortly with a bit of cream.

I decided to have a walk to Bolton Abbey, it's about 5 miles or so from my house and a route that I'm used to running and cycling. There was a bit of a motive for the destination as I knew there was going to be a visible pass of the Internation Space station (ISS) and an Iridium flare, both at the same time this evening. I wanted to be somewhere without too much light pollution, but also with an interesting foreground to photograph.

As I set of the clouds started rolling in, but I decided to carry on ( I'm always optomistic about these things ) and decided that even if I didn't see the satellites, I'd at least get a photo of the Abbey. It took an hour and a half to walk to Bolton Abbey and I arrived as the last of the daylight in the sky faded. I had to wait until just after 7pm for the ISS and Iridium 19 satellite flare.

The sky was fairly cloudy, but luckily the clouds were thin enough in the part of the sky where the two crossed. The ISS trail is the faint horizontal line to the left of the photo and the Iridiun flare is the shorter vertical line that is just underneath it. Both crossed each other at the same time and it was amazing to watch ( I've never seen the Iss and a flare at the same time before ). I've uploaded a cropped verion of the flare and Iss trail here.

As it was pitch black and I didn't want to walk home for five miles on unlit country lanes with no pavements and speeding cars, my neighbour Patrick very kindly picked me up and gave me a lift home. As a thank you I gave him a bit of LeeAnne's chocolate cake. I'm now off to tuck in to a slice myself :-).

So despite being a bit cloudy tonight, today's blip is .....


..... Satellites over Bolton Abbey.

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