Photographing the ISS Transit

On, January 21st, 2016, several intrepid DAS members dared to brave the cold weather the night before the Blizzard of 2016 to attempt to photograph a transit of the moon by the ISS that was predicted to be visible from northwestern Delaware. The results were quite good.

The International Space Station frequently transits both the moon and the sun from various locations on Earth due to its proximity to the Earth and rapid orbit. Determining where and when a transit will occur is somewhat difficult, but is made much easier with the use of a few astronomical websites.http://transit-finder.com/ and http://calsky.com/ are two very helpful websites for determining where and when transits will be visible from your area and how far you will have to travel to see them.

Two of us were recording videos, and the third was taking photos in burst mode on his camera. The transit occured very fast, it was less than one second, but we were able to see it visually when it happened. Then we went back later, took stills from our videos and edited our photos, made them into composite photos and videos, and those pictures and videos are posted below.