Shargin photographs North America -- why?

(hop) wrote:
(dave schneider) wrote in message . com...

Hmmmm. Nikon D1 + f800 lens...hi res photos? Is this the same setup
that takes pix of *80%* of Hurricane Jeanne?

The same camera, not the same lens. The Hurricane pics were taken
with fairly wide angle lenses.

With the 800mm lens (I'm not sure if f800 is a proper designation, but
the Ekon program is described as using an 800mm lens, and ISS has
everything from 800mm to 28mm), you can distinguish large buildings
and many roads.

Okay. But we've got published photos from the robot cameras that do
much better, right? From Spot as well as the few NRO photos that have
made it out...

I recall one of the crews reporting that how much
detail you get with the big lenses depends on the skill of the
photographer, because they have to move to compensate for orbital
motion. This is a big telephoto lens, which on earth would require a
tripod.

A professional tripod, at that!

Do the astro's brace against the window? Or is there a way to
float-and-track without intoducing jitter into the image?

Compare to the 28mm of the same area:
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/photo.pl?mission=ISS007&roll=E&frame=16685&QueryRe sultsFile=10981648103860.tsv&server=1
That looks a lot more like the hurricane pics.

When you ftp the hi-res 28mm image, you can clearly make out the salt
drying areas in South Bay. Maybe a ship track or 2, but the cloud
cover makes that more difficult, and there don't seem to be any around
Santa Cruz...

I strongly encourage browsing the eol.jsc.nasa.gov site, there is some
really cool stuff there. Nothing like checking out your hometown or
favorite landmarks from orbit.

Yeppers. I do it on a binge basis, and then rest for several weeks.
There's only what, 30 pages of indices?

/dps

The advantage of hand-held views is the oblique angle on the ground target,
especially if it has significant vertical dimension (as a hurricane does).
The automated imaging systems are usually straight down from directly
overhead.

That camera and lens is not really good enough for serious recon.
I doubt that anything that they have on board ISS is up to the task... if it
were NASA would know about it.


"Jim Oberg" wrote in message
...
From ISS On-Orbit Status, October 17: "Yuri Shargin used the Nikon D1
camera
with f800 lens on his first session of observation and imaging of selected
targets for the Russian Environmental Protection Service as part of the
Ekon
(KPT-3) experiment, today performing photography of the North American
continent."


Uh, my awkward question is this: what interest does a Russian
environmental
protection experiment have in high-res surface imaging of North America
(read: United States)? Since it's a Russian experiment, I presume this
means
that NASA will never see the images. Does this activity possibly have
anything to do with the recent severe shortage of Russian military
reconnaissance capability (nine months without ANY reccesat in orbit, just
recently alleviated)? I could be totally over-reacting here -- after all,
Anatoliy Perminov, head of Russia's Federal Space Agency, promised that
Shargin would not be doing any military-related activities on ISS, and
since
Perminov was until recently Shargin's boss (he's the former head of the
Russian 'Space Forces', and a military officer himself), this also
provides
a certain level of credibility to the assertion.

(dave schneider) wrote in message . com...

Okay. But we've got published photos from the robot cameras that do
much better, right? From Spot as well as the few NRO photos that have
made it out...

Indeed. One assumes that, outside of the temporary shortage of recon
sats that JimO mentioned, the Russians can get much higher quality
photos than they could from ISS. This is what makes the spying from
ISS theory hard for me to buy. Sure, they want to keep tabs on us, but
it's hard to imagine an urgent need, let alone one whose requirements
could be met from ISS.

A professional tripod, at that!

Do the astro's brace against the window? Or is there a way to
float-and-track without intoducing jitter into the image?

They do have various brackets on various windows. No idea what they
normally use. I recall one of them (Don Petit ?) even cooked up a
motor drive using one of their cordless drills and some other leftover
hardware, so he could do astrophotography.


Yeppers. I do it on a binge basis, and then rest for several weeks.
There's only what, 30 pages of indices?

/dps
The clickable map is a good place to start.
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/

There is a very nice sequence of the big sur/santa lucia mtn coastline
from ISS006-E-37278 through ISS006-E-37283.

hop wrote:
They do have various brackets on various windows. No idea what they
normally use. I recall one of them (Don Petit ?) even cooked up a
motor drive using one of their cordless drills and some other leftover
hardware, so he could do astrophotography.

If it wasn't him, it was the sort of thing he did. ("Pettit", BTW).
I enjoyed his diary entries immensely; he seemed to make the most of
his time in orbit, and then he would put it into words to share with
the rest of us. It's an enormous shame that since Ed Lu, nobody seems
to have found the time to write a couple of pages every couple of weeks.

"Jim Oberg" wrote:
The advantage of hand-held views is the oblique angle on the ground target,
especially if it has significant vertical dimension (as a hurricane does).
The automated imaging systems are usually straight down from directly
overhead.

There is nothing inherent about automatic systems (as a class) that
limits them to direct overhead shots. (That's not to say that a
singular system may not have that limitation.)

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"Jim Oberg" wrote:
"Clark" wrote
Google "open skies" and let your suspicions die a quiet death.

So, if the Russians WERE using the ISS for military rece photos,
you're saying we have no business knowing or caring about it?

It's their camera and partially their station...

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"Alan Erskine" wrote:
Jim, what kind of resolution do they get? If it's more than 1 metre, then
they can buy all the pickies they need from commercial sources with less
risk of creating an international incident.

If you buy commercial imagery, I suspect the companies involved tend
to keep records of what they have sold to whom.

This can be inconvenient at times.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"Jim Oberg"

So, if the Russians WERE using the ISS for military rece photos,
you're saying we have no business knowing or caring about it?

That's a pretty good way of putting it. I was just thinking about it the
other day. If you think about it, some good recon could just as easily
defuse military tension as facilitate it. LeCarre said a spy is a person
who serves two masters well.

Derek Lyons wrote:
So, if the Russians WERE using the ISS for military rece photos,
you're saying we have no business knowing or caring about it?

It's their camera and partially their station...

The ISS agreements do include clauses severely restricting military use of the
station. (Originally, the members wanted to fully prohibit military use, but
one country refused and forced concessions so that they could make limited
military use of it - and that country wasn't Russia).