Last Wednesday (23), astronauts Matthias Maurer (ESA) and Raja Chari (NASA) spent around seven hours on a spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS), carrying out maintenance work.
What the two didn’t realize was that keeping tabs on the feat was Sebastian Voltmer, a freelance astronomer from the town of Sankt Wendel, Germany. And he took the opportunity to photograph the opportunity – from here on Earth, from an angle unprecedented for many astronomy enthusiasts.
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Yesterday I saw the #walk in space shortly following sunset. Here is the first photo. #THIS #astronaut Matthias Maurer was “climbing” just then.
The rod-like structure (Canadarm2) is the robot arm.
Greetings from Matthias Maurer’s hometown – it was very exciting. #iss pic.twitter.com/39Q7YlG64u—Dr. Sébastien Voltmer (@SeVoSpace) 24 mars 2022
Voltmer is from the same town as astronaut Matthias Maurer – a fact he made a point of remembering when he posted the photo on his Twitter profile.
In an update post made last Sunday (27), when he had the opportunity to better analyze the photo, Voltmer was even able to show the point where Maurer and Chari were visible, pointing out that the image taken is of the moment of the “climb”. » of the two to the « CanadArm », a robotic structure installed by the Canadian space program and which serves as support during spacewalks from the ISS.
Yesterday I saw the #walk in space shortly following sunset. Here is the first photo. #THIS #astronaut Matthias Maurer was “climbing” just then.
The rod-like structure (Canadarm2) is the robot arm.
Greetings from Matthias Maurer’s hometown – it was very exciting. #iss pic.twitter.com/39Q7YlG64u—Dr. Sébastien Voltmer (@SeVoSpace) 24 mars 2022
Obviously, the freelance astronomer had state-of-the-art equipment to record the spacewalk here on Earth: an 11-inch Celestron EdgeHD personal telescope, mounted on a GM2000 HPS tripod, and an ASI290 planetary camera.
“I feel like I captured a single image,” Voltmer told SpaceWeather.com. “This is probably the first image taken from the surface of the Earth that shows two astronauts on the ISS at the same time. »
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