Earlier this week, I captured the International Space Station crossing the moon. Traveling at 17,500 miles per hour, the ISS transited the moon in under 0.7 seconds.
Edit: thanks for the kind responses and questions about the photo. This comment explains the process I went through to photograph the transit, so be sure to read it all.
There appear to be four space stations in the photograph, but no--there's still only one orbiting our planet. :) This is because I took four separate images of the transit and stacked them into one frame, showing the entire sequence. I exported a single frame from the four-image sequence. You can view it here. Again: more to read below.
This was a tricky shot to get. I used information from the wonderful http://www.transit-finder.com to calculate where I needed to be to capture this event. The width of the area in which the transit was visible was about 2.6 miles, and the center line went straight through a local beach 15 miles north of my house, so I arrived there with all my gear about 45 minutes in advance to set up. The transit was scheduled for 11:41:07.71pm local lasted for about 0.66 seconds. I used http://time.is to time the transit perfectly.
Gear: Nikon D7100, Sigma 150-500mm lens, and a 2x teleconverter to make my lens an effective 1500mm full frame equivalent (500mm + 2x teleconverter + 1.5x crop camera). Unfortunately the teleconverter really softened up the image; I think the image would've been sharper without it. I'm really looking forward to trying this shot again.
The entire DSLR/lens setup was mounted on top of what's called an equatorial mount. EQ mounts rotate against the Earth's movement and are typically used to prevent star trailing in astrophotography. My SkyWatcher Star Adventurer EQ mount has a lunar mode; this kept the moon in the same position in the frame so I wouldn't have to constantly move the lens.
Each of the four frames' settings: 1/3200 f/13 ISO 2500
I edited the images in Lightroom and brought them into Photoshop to auto-align them and stack them on top of each other. This is why there appears to be four space stations. The composite image shows the entire sequence.
What made this shot difficult is that the ISS was in Earth's shadow. While you can often see it illuminated shortly after sunset, it wasn't for this pass. I had no visual reference for how close it was getting to the moon. It was timed down to 1/100th of a second by transit-finder.com.
You guys may know me around here for my rocket launch photography; I'm a photographer residing on Florida's Space Coast that shoots a lot of Florida-related stuff, including rocket launches as a credentialed press member. I'm also working on the "daily photo challenge"; I'm taking and uploading a new photo every day of the year. I've been doing this non-stop since Jan. 1 of last year.
johnkphotos on April 14th, 2017 at 14:19 UTC »
Edit: thanks for the kind responses and questions about the photo. This comment explains the process I went through to photograph the transit, so be sure to read it all.
There appear to be four space stations in the photograph, but no--there's still only one orbiting our planet. :) This is because I took four separate images of the transit and stacked them into one frame, showing the entire sequence. I exported a single frame from the four-image sequence. You can view it here. Again: more to read below.
Feel free to follow me on Instagram: @johnkrausphotos.
This was a tricky shot to get. I used information from the wonderful http://www.transit-finder.com to calculate where I needed to be to capture this event. The width of the area in which the transit was visible was about 2.6 miles, and the center line went straight through a local beach 15 miles north of my house, so I arrived there with all my gear about 45 minutes in advance to set up. The transit was scheduled for 11:41:07.71pm local lasted for about 0.66 seconds. I used http://time.is to time the transit perfectly.
Gear: Nikon D7100, Sigma 150-500mm lens, and a 2x teleconverter to make my lens an effective 1500mm full frame equivalent (500mm + 2x teleconverter + 1.5x crop camera). Unfortunately the teleconverter really softened up the image; I think the image would've been sharper without it. I'm really looking forward to trying this shot again.
The entire DSLR/lens setup was mounted on top of what's called an equatorial mount. EQ mounts rotate against the Earth's movement and are typically used to prevent star trailing in astrophotography. My SkyWatcher Star Adventurer EQ mount has a lunar mode; this kept the moon in the same position in the frame so I wouldn't have to constantly move the lens.
Here is a short video of my setup and how fast it took images.
Each of the four frames' settings: 1/3200 f/13 ISO 2500
I edited the images in Lightroom and brought them into Photoshop to auto-align them and stack them on top of each other. This is why there appears to be four space stations. The composite image shows the entire sequence.
What made this shot difficult is that the ISS was in Earth's shadow. While you can often see it illuminated shortly after sunset, it wasn't for this pass. I had no visual reference for how close it was getting to the moon. It was timed down to 1/100th of a second by transit-finder.com.
You guys may know me around here for my rocket launch photography; I'm a photographer residing on Florida's Space Coast that shoots a lot of Florida-related stuff, including rocket launches as a credentialed press member. I'm also working on the "daily photo challenge"; I'm taking and uploading a new photo every day of the year. I've been doing this non-stop since Jan. 1 of last year.
Website
Instagram, @johnkrausphotos
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ResimusChaste on April 14th, 2017 at 14:55 UTC »
This is absolutely incredible! Thank you for sharing this, this makes my day.
SlothOfDoom on April 14th, 2017 at 14:59 UTC »
Ok, so you captured the ISS. That's surprising but I think we can figure this out. What are your demands for its release?