Using a 45-centimeter telescope equipped with a CCD camera, Gordon Garradd of Loomberah, New South Wales, Australia, picked up CONTOUR during and just after the spacecraft's sixth orbit correction maneuver since launch on July 3. The 58.5-second thruster burn on July 27 began at 12:02:28 Universal Time with CONTOUR more than 28,000 miles (about 45,400 kilometers) above the Hawaiian Islands.

Garradd assembled a series of 6-second exposures to create the first sequence, taken during the maneuver itself. He then sped the exposures up to 2 seconds each for a later sequence, and in one frame caught a Russian upper-stage rocket from a February 2000 launch that was lower and brighter than CONTOUR.

../../../images copyright Gordon Garradd, Loomberah, Australia.

Visit Gordon's web site for more cool ../../../images he has captured.

Click here for more information on viewing CONTOUR during future maneuvers.

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