[ASTRONOMIA] ¨ ISS Transits Mars

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/200...Glenn_1000.jpg

image credit & copyright: Tom Glenn




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 kilometres 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 september 21, 2020, at 05:15:47 local time from just northeast of San Diego, California, USA

although typically much smaller, angularly, than the ISS, Mars was approaching its maximum angular size, because the blue planet (Earth) was set to pass its closest, this day, to the red planet (Mars) in their respective orbits around the Sun

















































in apod.nasa.gov/apod