In this 5 minute 20 second time exposure made with ASA 800 film and a wide-angle lens on March 19, setting stars leave short, almost vertical trails . As if in poignant response, the Hubble Space Telescope appeared in Brazilian skies within a minute after Mir's passage and also left a flare along a trail moving toward the top of the picture. Lights visible on the horizon are from nearby Itaparica Island. After 15 years in service, the long-lived Mir space station was safely deorbited today . The splashdown of its surviving pieces occurred in a remote area of the South Pacific Ocean.
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