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Credit & Copyright: Tom Glenn
Explanation:
Yes, but have you ever seen the space station do this?
If you
know when and where to look,
watching the bright
International Space Station (ISS) drift across your night sky is a
fascinating sight -- but not very unusual.
Images of the ISS crossing in front of the half-degree
Moon or
Sun do exist,
but are somewhat rare as they take planning, timing, and patience to acquire.
Catching the ISS crossing in front of
minuscule Mars, though, is on another level.
Using online software,
the featured photographer learned that
the unusual transit would be visible only momentarily
along a very narrow stretch of nearby land spanning just 90 meters.
Within this stretch, the equivalent
ground velocity of the passing ISS image would be
a quick 7.4 kilometers per second.
However, with a standard camera, a small telescope,
an exact location to set up his equipment,
an exact direction to point the telescope,
and sub-millisecond timing -- he created
a video
from which the featured 0.00035 second exposure was extracted.
In the resulting
image capture, details on both Mars and the ISS are visible simultaneously.
The
featured image was acquired last Monday at 05:15:47 local time from just northeast
of
San Diego,
California,
USA.
Although typically much smaller, angularly, than the
ISS, Mars is approaching its
maximum angular size in the next few weeks, because the
blue planet
(Earth) is set to
pass its closest to the
red planet
(Mars) in their respective orbits around the Sun.
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NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: ISS - Mars
Publications with words: ISS - Mars
See also: