See the Space Station's Cupola -- From the Ground!

By Nancy Atkinson - May 7, 2010 at 5:37 AM UTC | Space Exploration
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Amateur astronomer

Ralf Vandebergh

of the Netherlands has been taking amazing close-up shots of the International Space Station and other orbiting spacecraft for years, but this one might be my favorite since

I'm a little partial to the new Cupola

on the ISS. Here, you can see the Cupola, including details of the seven windows! Click the image to see a larger version on Ralf's website.

Ralf uses a 10 inch Newtonian telescope with a videocam eyepiece, and manually tracks the ISS and other objects across the sky. He takes most of his images in color to obtain the maximum possible information of the objects. Of course, he has to deal with atmospheric turbulance, so his best shots occur when the lighting angle, viewing angle, seeing, distance and other factors all converge together to enable a great shot like this one.

Check out

Ralf's website

where you can see his other images, including this one of ISS and Dexter, the special purpose manipulator, or this one of space shuttle Discovery on the STS-131 mission. He also captured

astronaut Joe Acaba on an EVA outside the ISS

in March of 2009, which was featured on

Astronomy Picture of the Day.

You can also follow

Ralf on Twitter

to see his latest images.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com