Epic photo of the International Space Station passing in front of the moon


thumb

"International Space Station over Australia," by Dylan O'Donnell.

He explains,

I was super happy to catch the silhouette of the ISS over the disc of the moon last night! The CalSky website sends me alerts for potential fly overs for which I've been waiting a long time – about 12 months. I got one this week and this was adjusted by 15 seconds by the time of the "occultation".

If you think that it might be a case of sitting there with your camera and a clock, with one hand on the shutter release, you'd be absolutely correct! The ISS only passed over the moon for 0.33 seconds as it shoots by quite quickly. Knowing the second it would pass I fired a "burst" mode of exposures then crossed my fingers and hoped it would show up in review – and it did!

The setup was my Canon 70D attached to the rear cell of my Celestron 9.25″ telescope (2300mm / f10). The shutter speed was a quick 1/1650th of a second and ISO 800 in order to freeze the ISS in motion.

I took about a second of further exposures on either side of the pass to stack the lunar surface detail using AutoStakkert2, and the increased the saturation in post to create this colour enhanced version of the moon. The colours on the moon relate to the chemical composition of moon geology.

Here is a close up so you can see the modules and the solar arrays captured fairly clearly!

ISS-closeup

[HT: Brian William Jones]