This Photographer Managed to Line Up Saturn and the ISS in the Same Shot
An amateur astrophotographer captured a remarkable shot showing the International Space Station (ISS) and Saturn in the same frame.
Smadi says he planned the shot for two days and traveled 50 miles to get himself in the right spot to line up the two very different celestial objects.
Even though the two objects look vaguely the same size in the image, there was in fact 1.39 billion kilometers (roughly 863.7 million miles) apart, which is a testament to the immense size of the gas giant.
“I used the Stellarium app alongside coordinate calculations to find a location where these two bodies would meet,” Smadi writes on Instagram. “Proud to say I’m one of just a handful of humans to capture this event.”
Smadi also shared his RAW file, which shows a much darker Saturn. This, he explains, is because of the “inverse square law of light,” which states that the intensity of light is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source, meaning Saturn’s brightness drops rapidly due to it being outside of the inner solar system — the four terrestrial planets.
“The conditions were phenomenal, but the Station was quite far away at the time of the image, so it isn’t the sharpest. However, Saturn looks amazing, so I’m honestly just stoked with that image itself,” Smadi adds.
Smadi used a Celestron Nexstar Evolution 9.25″ telescope with a ZWO ASI662MC camera to capture the image.
NASA APOD
Smadi’s image got picked up by NASA for its Astronomy Picture of the Day feature on July 18.
“This month, bright planet Saturn rises in evening skies, its rings oriented nearly edge-on when viewed from planet Earth. And in the early morning hours on July 6, it posed very briefly with the International Space Station when viewed from a location in Federal Way, Washington, USA,” NASA writes of Smadi’s image.
“This well-planned image, a stack of video frames, captures their momentary conjunction in the same telescopic field of view. With the ISS in low Earth orbit, space station and gas giant planet were separated by almost 1.4 billion kilometers.
“Their apparent sizes are comparable but the ISS was much brighter than Saturn and the ringed planet’s brightness has been increased for visibility in the stacked image. Precise timing and an exact location were needed to capture the ISS/Saturn conjunction.”
Smadi has a track record of capturing exciting photos of the ISS, he captured an impressively clear shot of it not long ago, and he’s captured amazing images of Saturn before too, recording a solar eclipse on the planet in June.
More of Smadi’s work can be found on his Instagram and Reddit.
Image credits: AJ Smadi.
