Spotting the International Space Station - Part 2

Despite assuring my husband that I'd taken enough photographs of the ISS and we could put the tripod away, I couldn't resist going back out yesterday for the last extremely bright passing of the ISS until June.

Last night's first pass was relatively early and so the first few photos are quite light. I could tell it was still twilight as I had a couple of bats keeping me company. I ended up being outside for almost an hour as once the ISS had passed, I then started spotting constellations. I just could have done with a slightly wider angle lens, maybe in June!

Again, I started with firing off a few test shots, to check what ISO worked and to check the sky was in focus. This time the ISS passed much higher in the sky, but it gave me plenty of time to grab a few shots.

In the last photo, if you look really closely you can see a second, much fainter, light trail behind the ISS, about a couple of inches from the top in the middle of the tree. This is the Dragon cargo ship, due to connect with the ISS today.

I then started gazing at the stars, wondering what I was looking at and downloaded the Star Chart app. I do love Wifi, being able to download apps from my back garden is amazing! This gave me a much better idea of what I was looking at.

I was determined to photograph The Plough, but my lens wasn't quite wide enough, try as I might I could only capture six of the seven stars. A plane did fly past as I was capturing it though, which added a bit of interest and made me feel a bit better about not getting the whole constellation. Something to aim for in June!

Spotting the International Space Station

I'm aware that this makes me sound like an utter geek, but please bear with me.

Over the past few months I've heard more and more people talking about seeing the International Space Station (the 'ISS') in the night's sky. Parents were particularly excited around Christmas as they could pass its appearance off to their children as Santa on his sledge. I have to admit with no children to impress and freezing nights, I wasn't inclined to go out and stare up at the sky, without a clue what I was looking for. That changed this week when more and more people were mentioning it on Twitter and there was a flurry of photographs. Being keen on finding any excuse to take some photographs, suddenly I was drawn in.

Although the ISS is constantly orbiting the Earth, it can't always be seen. There will be periods of time when it will be visible almost every night, which has been the position we've been in for the last week or two. There are several sites which will tell you when you can see it from your location, my favourite is www.meteorwatch.org but NASA has a larger database. The ISS always moves from west to east, but on a different trajectory and at a different altitude each time. It's easy enough to spot though if you know vaguely what direction to look in, particularly if you pick a night when it's extremely bright, as it looks like a fast moving star.

I headed out a couple of nights this week to try and take some photographs. It proved much more difficult than I was expecting. Although I had a tripod and camera, standing in the back garden in the dark, suddenly everything was trickier than I expected. Changing my camera to remote control mode by torch mode whist it was on top of a tripod at eye level was virtually impossible, and even focusing was pure guesswork. I tried a few test shots before the ISS was due to arrive, just to decide what ISO and shutter speed I should be using. I needed the sky dark enough so that the ISS would stand out, but a long enough shutter speed so that rather than just photographing a dot in the sky, I'd get a light trail of its movement over several seconds.

 
This was my first shot, which came out surprisingly well. We've been lucky this week with clear weather on many nights when the ISS has passed over so I'm glad I made the most of it.

My husband wanted to take the opportunity to try some long exposure torch photographs, this was his contribution to the evening. Maybe not of such interest to NASA, but I quite liked it!

I may have a final attempt tonight at a few more photographs, I'm just hoping the cloud clears before 9pm. If you take any photographs of the ISS yourself, please let me know. I'd love to see them.

My bizarre selection of driving music

Since changing jobs a few weeks back, I'm now spending around two hours a day in the car. Most people think this will be torture, but I actually quite enjoy the time. On my journey into work, I listen to the local radio station, telling me what crisis is currently befalling the Bristol area. On my way home, I tend to switch over to the music on my phone and listen to that.

It was on a journey home last week when I realised what a bizarre selection of music my phone must contain. I'd gone from the classic rock of 'The Chain' by Fleetwood Mac, to 'Fantastic Day' by Haircut 100. I'm not even sure how that made it onto my phone! I decided I'd see what the next ten tracks were that it came up with. These are unedited and so please don't judge me!

The tracks that my phone decided I should admit to listening to are:

•  Starlight - The Supermen Lovers (the baseline actually made my car shake)
• Like a Star - Corinne Bailey Rae (beautiful, just beautiful)
• 7 Nation Army - Marcus Collins (not sure where this came from, but it's pleasant enough)
• Fire - Kasabian (I'm not much of a Kasabian fan, but quite like this track)
• Weekend in New England - Barry Manilow (honestly, I don't remember this coming on, if my phone was going to give me Barry Manilow, why not Copacabana??)
• Somebody to Love - Queen (I had a proper singalong to this)
• Can't Fight the Moonlight - LeAnn Rimes (must watch Coyote Ugly again!)
• Love Shack - The B-52s (bit of a summer song, it didn't really suit the M4 in the rain)
• Bodies - Robbie Williams (again, I don't remember this coming on, but given the amount of Robbie Williams and Take That on my phone, it's almost inevitable that something would be in the list)
• Lust for Life - Iggy Pop (good bit of rock to finish off my journey)

I've added a video playlist of these tracks below, just in case you want to listen to them yourself.

Now, let's see what music my phone has for me this week...

Win a stay at Retallack Resort and Spa

 I've gone a bit crazy with competition entering recently and despite not winning anything to date, I'm determined that that will change some time soon! Having come across this competition myself, I thought I'd give any readers who are interested a chance to see if they have more luck with competitions than I do!

Retallack Resort and Spa are offering you the chance to win a Staycation of your own, be it to relive your childhood holidays, spend some quality time with family and friends or treat you and your loved ones. By simply liking, following or tweeting about us in the widget below you could win a 7 night stay in one of our 2 bed, baby friendly holiday lodges.

The resort is based in Cornwall and provides luxury accommodation for a self-catering holiday. Whilst the baby friendly holiday idea is a bit lost on me, I notice they also do dog friendly holidays, which is much more my thing! Any holiday location that welcomes muddy paws sounds good to me!

Good luck, and don't forget to let me know if you win!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

My photo an hour project

I've seen plenty of photo an hour projects before and have always thought about doing one, but not enough to actually set a date. That changed when I was talking to a friend on Twitter this week, she'd tried to do it in the week but had forgotten about it after two photos. We decided we'd both try to do it this Saturday and send each other reminders so we didn't forget. My day's been fairly uneventful, so apologies in advance for the mundane nature of my photos!

9am Minimal make up, just enough so I didn't scare anyone when I left the house.

10am Waiting for Brooke, my friendly beautician for my monthly spruce up.

11am Making the most of the mild, sunny weather to nip outside to see the daffodils.

12pm A quick trip to Sainsbury's to pick up food for the day. We made the mistake of going when we were hungry...

1pm Lunch! I'm still practicing with poached eggs. The yolks were runny, just, thirty seconds less in the pan and I reckon they'd be perfect.

2pm We both had a bit of a wardrobe cull, picking out anything that we no longer wear to donate to charity. This was my wardrobe afterwards. I've turned my hangers around so that in six months or a year I'll be able to see what I've not worn and donate that too.

3pm The curse of shopping when you're hungry. We now seem to have cake in for a mid afternoon snack. Awesome!

4pm I've been working through the training pack for Sage, a piece of software I'll need to be using every day from Monday. Almost at the end of box 1...

5pm Yay, I passed the self test module for the final book in the box 1. Next, box 2...

6pm Whilst Andrew was watching Star Wars, I thought I'd start my post about my photo an hour. Bit odd that it features in a photo, but never mind!

7pm We were going to go out for food tonight, but I didn't fancy venturing out into the weather. Instead we had homemade burger and wedges. Amazing!

8pm I recorded Despicable Me a few nights ago, can you believe I've never seen it? I quite enjoyed it, Andrew complained there wasn't enough plot for him. I think he may have been confused about the target audience!

9pm A nice hot drink. I'm not entirely sure whether Andrew picking mugs related to a former employer of each of us was entirely accidental.

10pm Level 275 of Candy Crush finally defeated!

11pm Time for a nice soak in the bath before bed.

I quite enjoyed doing this, although the hourly photos seemed to come around so quickly. Next time maybe I'll do a work day, so you can see how mundane that is too! If you've done your own version of the photo an hour project recently, leave me your link!

My top beauty products of 2013

This is uncharted territory, I've never done a beauty blog before, but the best thing about being a lifestyle blogger is that I can blog about anything, so here goes!

I've read a few similar blogs about favourite products of 2013, I tend to just use whatever I put my hands on, but did try out a few new things in 2013 and found some real corkers as a result. I've listed my five favourites in no particular order below. Apologies for not running this close to the start of the year, but it's taken me this long to get any decent daytime light for taking photographs! 

Nars Sheer Glow Foundation

I have to admit I'd been working my way through old half bottles of foundation, but after a breakout (probably caused by the prehistoric make up I was using!) I wanted something with better coverage. I went to Space NK and they helped me to find the right shade for me, which I was astonished wasn't actually the palest one. I love this foundation, the coverage is good without feeling too heavy, it lasts me all day and i like the satin finish. Even better, NARS apparently recommend that you apply this using your figures and I'm rubbish at sticking to using a brush. Definitely my new foundation of choice.

Milk_shake Hair Conditioning Whipped Cream

This product comes out as a mousse, but it conditions and detangles my hair and gives it body and control without leaving it sticky. When you've got hair as fine as mine, that's all good. You apply it to wet hair and then dry and style as usual. As well as making my hair look better, it smells amazing too. I started using this after it was recommended to me on Twitter and it's been a firm favourite ever since. 

 By Terry Touch-Expert Concealer

This was recommended to me in Space NK, they applied it to one side of my face only and once I'd seen the difference I couldn't leave it on the shelf. Terry apparently originally designed YSL's Touche Eclat and has subsequently produced this similar product under her own name. Much like the NARS Sheer Glow foundation, this gives a dewy finish but with good coverage and blends really well. It's a great product for under eye circles to brighten your face and make you look less tired, which I badly need having developed an aversion to getting to bed at a sensible time on a work night.

Dermalogica Daily Microfoliant 

I probably bought this a couple of years ago, but it's only been with trying to improve my skin care regime over the last year that I've started to use this regularly. I now use it every day and it's certainly made a difference to my complexion. It comes out of the tub in a powder, which when mixed with water until it turns into a foaming paste. This then exfoliates your skin, but less aggressively than an exfoliator containing grains or beads would. It leaves my skin soft and clean, the only downside is the price, but when you only use half a teaspoon a time, it lasts for ages.

No. 7 Stay Perfect Mascara

I've started having my eyelashes tinted, but when I've let that lapse or just need a bit of a top up this is my current mascara of choice. I have terrible problems with mascara, whatever brand I try, I always seem to end up looking like a panda by lunch time. This one is different as it really did stay where I'd put it. It comes off fairly easily with warm water, but in fibres rather than by being dissolved. It really does do what it says on the tube, it may not give you the longest, most voluminous eyelashes, but if you have problems with panda eyes, this one is definitely worth a try.

 If you've done a post about your top beauty products of 2013 please leave me your link, I'd love to read it. I've quite enjoyed writing this post, so who knows, I may have more beauty posts in me!

Reuniting people with their lost possessions - the strength of social media

You may have noticed a tweet I posted yesterday evening. I'd been onto Facebook and a friend from Scotland had found a camera case containing a memory card. He found a picture of a couple on it and had uploaded it to the site in an attempt to track them down and reunite them with their holiday photographs. He doesn't use Twitter and so I offered to share it on there for him.

It turns out that social media users love feeling like they can help someone out. I often see photos of lost teddy bears, but this was my first experience of seeing how wide something like this can spread. The initial Facebook post was shared 7,225 times. He also posted it on the Lomond Shores page which had 2,185 shares and 570 shares from the What's on in East Renfrew site. 

On Twitter, the post is still being shared but has been retweeted well over 9,000 times, which is impossible to comprehend, and that's without thinking about all the modified tweets. The post also trended in Australia, New Zealand and America. I've picked up 150 extra followers, presumably all keen to hear the happy outcome.

The comments were worth a read, lots of people identified the glacier in the photo, with the top suggestions being locations in Alaska and New Zealand, and a number of jokers hoped the couple pictured weren't having an elicit affair. However, one author suggested he's use that as a plot for his new book, so some good has come of it! Some people managed to identify the man's ski jacket brand (and even glasses!) thus working out the couple were British. Honestly, it's amazing what you can work out from a photo. 

There were a couple of suggestions that you should take a photograph of your address in case you lose your memory card, or use the meta data so it can be traced to you, which I'll definitely bear in mind.

One comment suggested I'd hear from the Daily Mail, and ironically I have, as well as the Independent. It's not my story to share, but it's the sort of thing they love and I'm happy to say it was a success in this instance. My friend who originally found the card has been contacted by someone who recognised the couple and has spoken to them today and the memory card should be back with them tomorrow.

I do love a happy ending, now if someone can just tell me how to stop these retweets, so I can start using my phone again, that would be grand!

By way of an update, you can read more in The Independent's report here.