Sunday 12 April 2015

Atlantis over Tenerife

Japanese astronaut Sochi Noguchi took this iconic picture of the Space Shuttle Atlantis over the Atlantic Ocean and the island of Tenerife. The picure was taken from the International Space Station on Sunday, May 16 2010 at 10:28 am EDT (1428 GMT) while the Atlantis was getting ready for docking. At that time the ISS was about 350 km above the ground. This was the flight before the last one for the shuttle. In the highest resolution, the white towers of the solar telescopes at the Observatorio del Teide (IAC) are visible between the clouds. To help your eyes, I took a snapshot from the Google Maps: look for the distinctive dark patches in the NASA picture, the towers are tiny white dots just above them.

Credit: NASA/Sochi Noguchi (click for hi-res)

Credit: Google Maps (click to go to the interactive map)