Discovery’s last flight

Looking from Troopers Hill back towards the centre of town. This young couple were sat there and helpfully agreed to have me wave a bike light at them. They were totally indifferent to what I was doing, when I showed them the shot, the girl just said she needed to sort out her roots 😀
Obviously this is a composite. I shot one exposure for the pass, one to get the moon and Jupiter exposed correctly (and shorter too because you get a fair amount of motion blur on this time scale), 2 light painting the couple (one from a distance that didn’t bring them out enough but helped with a bit of fill and one where I focussed over their heads and painted around them more closely) and one to bring in some car headlights to the lower right of the pic as it was very black over there
The sky was still a bit brighter in the West which shows up here

EDIT: 7th MarchI got a @twisst alert again and decided to head out to the suspension bridge to get a shot – as it turns out, I was all set and then it came up from the wrong side of the bridge from where I was and sailed straight out of shot (imperceptibly as well – the low altitude meant it was dimmer than I had pre-metered for).
I left the camera and just decided to watch. Then I saw a plane following it .. I thought “what are the chances?” A couple of seconds later I realised I was looking at Discovery. That was SO COOL. I was shouting at people in the street to look up – they thought I was mad. I stood there and stared and suddenly felt really emotional. As an ’81 baby, the shuttle has been with me my whole life. It was Helen Sharman who really got me mad keen on astronomy from TV appearances she made (I think much before her ’89 trip because I know I was dead keen on it when I was at most 6). I’ve never seen the shuttle before – but to see it peacefully floating overhead, indifferent to the rat race below was just incredible. There’s something about the shuttle that fills me with childhood awe and the sense that I can look up and see people so far above fills me with hope.
I’m going to deeply miss the shuttle program. Sure it had its problems but to anyone who wasn’t sure IT GOT PEOPLE INTO SPACE! There’s also something really joyless about Project Constellation, it feels like a massive step backwards.
The shuttle has poetry … and that’s why I stood alone on the street tonight, shedding a tear. Goodnight Discovery – might I get a last glimpse tomorrow?