[Credit: ISS Expedition 28 Crew, STS-135 Mission, NASA]
I don’t understand how this picture was taken/put together. The shuttle must have taken several minutes at least to make the track in the photo, but the ISS, from where the photo/s were taken, had to have moved hundreds if not thousands of miles. Yet the earth under the shuttle’s track is sharp and clear, not blurred.
Is the picture the product of extensive manipulation/combination of many pictures taken from a moving vantage point?
Since the space shuttle does not have an ablative heat shield, I am not sure what leaves the smoke trail, unless it is an artifact of the ionization of the atmosphere around the shuttle as it passes through at high speed.
Just thought you might find these interesting.
New photos of Vesta
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/feature_stories/spacecraft_begins_science_orbits.asp
Very interesting black crater in this one.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/multimedia/pia14317.html