Painting The Space Station With a Laser

This extraordinary video clip was recorded at ESA’s Optical Ground Station (OGS) at about 19:05 UTC on 8 October 2014 as the station illuminated the ISS with a 3.6-Watt 532-nm green laser, used for testing next-gen optical communication technologies.
The video clearly shows the ISS bathed in green light as it is tracked by the OGS through the 4-minute pass at an altitude of about 420 km.

The video is a time lapse done at 7 shots per second with a reflex digital camera attached to the OGS secondary telescope.

The OGS is located at the Teide Observatory, Tenerife, Spain, which is operated by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias.

The demonstration was conducted as part of ESA’s #SpaceOptics SocialSpace event, 7-8 October.

More photos via http://bit.ly/spaceoptics2014

Credit: IAC/Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias/Daniel Lopez