Nanosail-D2, NASA's First Experimental Solar Sail
Taken by Ralf Vandebergh on April 22, 2025 @
The Netherlands
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Details:
Nanosail-D2 was NASA's first experimental solarsail. I took the first high-resolution images of the sail at the time. Why I post this reprocessing here after years? Read further in this text. This reprocessing of the initial images shows the deployed sail in never before seen detail. We see attitude, viewing angle, the shape of the deployed sail in orbit and other information.
The images were actually taken for a joint photo-contest of NASA and Spaceweather.com - to encourage astrophotographers to take images of the sail. It turned out that I took the first high-resolution images of the Nanosail-D2 and the only images taken with an amateur telescope. There was one other known image, by Ron Dantowitz but with a much bigger professional telescope, but with comparable resolution. In spite of that, any nomination, price or publication for my images, taken from the backyard with manually tracking technique was never received. I did a lot efforts on several nights to get images of the sail, encouraged by the photo-contest but also inspired by the object. I could have used the price money very well at the time. But most importantly; I'm interested in captureing images of follow-up solar sails, but not before I get the recognition that I deserved with the images of the first solar sail. I think other photographers will understand very well what I mean.
Photographer's website:
https://x.com/ralfvandebergh
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