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ISS Goes Solar
SumDog writes "The international space station's newest power source, a set of solar wings, made its debut yesterday. The solar array is part of a new 17.5-ton space station segment that was connected to the orbiting outpost during a spacewalk Monday."
Me thinks you are talking out of your rear aperature
Its damn hard to image ISS _details_ (even with the shuttle attached) with an 8inch (200mm) telescope let alone a pair of binoculars. I've seen the ISS (with and without attached shuttle) naked eye, thru binoculars (7x50), and an 8 inch Meade LX-90 using a 12mm eyepiece (many times naked eye, many times with the binoculars and a few with the scope). Binoculars (that you can hand hold) are going to show you a blob - a blob which (in my opinion) got more orange when they added the large set of panels in December of 2006 (STS116) - haven't had the opportunity to view the ISS since STS117 added yet another set. I've had brief glimpses of the ISS this spring with the 200mm / 12mm comobo (about 170x magnification) - with a __lot__ of imagination I might have seen more than a blob. You certainly can image a very low level of ISS detail with an 8 inch scope but you need zero cloud cover and perfect seeing, a very well collimated set of optics, well developed tracking experience, and a bit of luck. The ability to image details increases if you capture multiple images and post process the data - thats how most non-professional ISS images you see on the web are produced.
For anyone who finds this interesting you can visit heavens-above.com to get accurate info on when you can see the ISS (and other satellites) over your location - naked eye ISS viewing is perfectly doable however, only folks with a reasonably large aperature scope (8 inches or more for us non-professional astromomers) and excellent viewing conditions and tracking experience are going to see anything beyond a colored blob.
I'd like to know the realistic reasons why solar power isn't far more prevalent as a source of power generation, particularly on a local/household scale. Why are solar panels still so expensive?