The Space Station Next To The Moon

This morning was NEARLY perfect conditions for this picture. For weeks I had been waiting for today, the day that the space station would graze the corner of the moon as seen from my backyard perspective. Usually when the space station crosses the moon, an already rare event, it does so in the shadow of the Earth. In those instances when it isn't lit you can only see the station as a silhouette against the moon, but this morning the space station pass was close enough to sunrise that the space station would be illuminated by the sun.

I've already been foiled by clouds twice this year trying to get similar shots, but this morning I got out of bed to a beautifully clear sky. The only negative was that it was incredibly windy, gusts of 20-30mph. So much wind means the atmosphere is very turbulent, so images of small details like the space station will end up a bit blurred and fuzzy.

Because of the wind the space station isn't as sharp as I'd like, but there is some structure visible. With a close eye you can see the main truss (lower left to upper right line) as well as the American portion (upper left of the station) and the Russian portion (lower right).

I wish the station was a little clearer, but considering the atmospheric conditions and the direction the sunlight was coming from it's a picture I'm really happy with as a first try.

Here it is a little more zoomed in:

This picture is actually a composite of two photographs because the exposures are drastically different for the station and the moon. The space station was ISO 6400 and shutter 1/1600sec on my 8" telescope with a 2X barlow lens. The moon was ISO 500 and shutter 1/60sec with the same telescope and barlow lens setup. The moon is actually a 50 images stacked in AutoStakkert and then sharpened using wavelets in Registax. I combined the two images in GIMP and did some slight level adjustments in DarkTable.

And while the moon is out why not take a whole picture, it's always gorgeous: