Probably my luckiest shot ever, I captured a shot of the ISS right on the terminator of a slim crescent moon. [OC]

Image from preview.redd.it and submitted by ajamesmccarthy
image showing Probably my luckiest shot ever, I captured a shot of the ISS right on the terminator of a slim crescent moon. [OC]

ajamesmccarthy on October 18th, 2020 at 00:03 UTC »

While it is lucky- this also is the result of meticulous planning. This is a rare type of transit. The ISS when it transits the moon is vary rarely illuminated like this, and when it is, it is usually too low on the horizon to get decent details. So I had to make sure to travel to the location of the transit (a space about 200 feet wide and about 10 miles long) but it happened to pass thorugh mostly private property. Thankfully I found a public road that left me a good spot to shoot it. I recorded video at 150fps at 2000mm with a special type of camera for this event to get this level of detail, and timed my shots down to the second to make sure I didn't miss it.

This full disc image is an HDR mosaic- the field of view for the camera I used was far too narrow to capture the full moon, so the moon was stitched together from 6 tiles and blended with an Earthshine shot captured that morning for "dark side" details. The transit itself happened in broad daylight. Here is a video (slowed down to about half speed) of the pass as it happened in-camera.

If you'd like to see more of my work- come join me on insta, I post behind the scenes and go live when I'm capturing events like this so I can do Q&A.

Idontlikecock on October 18th, 2020 at 00:22 UTC »

It's one thing to capture a transit of the ISS over the full moon, it's another to get it crossing such a small illuminated portion. That's like the difference of setting up your telescope a few blocks away. /u/_Bar made his calculator insanely accurate

squiirlysgurl on October 18th, 2020 at 00:32 UTC »

I'm starting to think the moon might not be made of cheese...