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Mir-Atlantis

Subject: Mir-Atlantis Date: July 6, 1995 Location: Long Beach, CA Lens: 50mm F-stop: 1.7 Exposure time: Filters: none Film: ISO/ASA: 100 About the Title: The United States space shuttle Atlantis is docked with the Russian space station Mir in this photograph. "Mir" can mean anything from "peace" to "commune" to "world."

This was one of my more challenging photographs. I had just learned how to take night exposures that evening (see Arborluna), and wasn't even sure if it would work. We had read in the paper that the Mir-Atlantis pair would be visible that night, streaming across the sky, and my whole family was out there watching for it. It happened to be cloudy that night, and we feared we would miss it, as we did not see it for the first half of its journey across our sky, but then suddenly it came into view, gliding beautifully out of the clouds, and I set my camera to work. I managed to get two pictures, but I was holding the shutter release button manually, and I jiggled the camera during the other exposure. Printing the picture was a whole other experience. I could not see the trail in the dark room at all, and had to guess blindly at the focus and exposure time, but after a bit of trial and error I succeeded. My life in astrophotography had begun and I was hooked!