The
International Space Station and the Moon’s Tycho Crater star in this cosmic
twofer caught by skywatcher
Ed Morana.
Morana,
a native of Livermore, California, caught the space station’s transit across
the Moon on Oct. 6. The station’s new portside
solar arrays – which were delivered
to the ISS during a September 2006 shuttle flight – can be easily seen in this
composite view of the four-second transit.
Ed Morana assembled this movie using images he took of the ISS passing in front of the Moon on Oct. 6, 2006. Credit: E. Morana. Click to enlarge. | “Thanks to
the new solar panels and the crater Tycho in the image, this has to be my
favorite so far,” Morana told SPACE.com.
A veteran ISS lunar
transit hunter, Morana relies on Thomas Fly’s ISS Transit Alert
Service to plan his observations.
For
this transit, Morana traveled just outside Tracy, California and used a Meade
10-inch (25-centimeter) LX200GPS telescope and Watec 90sH CCD Video Camera to
record the ISS as it assed overhead at an altitude of about 260 miles (418 kilometers).
The
result is a 12-frame, four-second video and a complete success for Morana’s
first ISS lunar transit photo session since the new solar arrays arrived at the
space station.
-- Tariq Malik
Credit:
Ed Morana
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