Astrophotographer AJ Smadi managed to capture an astonishing and extremely rare alignment of two spa
The unique image was taken from a park in Edmonds, Washington, United States. At the time, Venus had just emerged from behind the Sun after its full-disk phase and was slightly more than half illuminated.
In the final image, the two objects appear similar in size, but this is merely a striking optical illusion. The ISS orbits Earth at an altitude of approximately 402 km and is comparable in size to a football stadium. Venus, by contrast, is similar in size to Earth but was located at an enormous distance of 135 million km from the observer.
Meter-Level Precision and High-Speed Imaging
Capturing such a moment was extremely difficult because the ISS travels through orbit at an astonishing speed of 7.5 km/s. To align the objects in the frame, Smadi had to calculate the observation point on Earth’s surface in advance with an accuracy of one meter.
For the shoot, the photographer used a 23.5-centimeter, or 9.25-inch, Celestron Schmidt–Cassegrain telescope with a focal length of 2,350 mm, a specialized ZWO ASI662MC astronomy camera equipped with a Sony IMX662 sensor, and a UV/IR-cut filter to block unwanted portions of the light spectrum. Using an exposure time of 1/150 of a second, Smadi captured 10 sharp frames, which he later combined to achieve maximum detail.
This is not the first time AJ Smadi has impressed the community with technically challenging astrophotography. He previously succeeded in photographing the ISS against the much more distant Saturn, located 1.39 billion km from Earth. His portfolio also includes detailed photographs of the station itself and images of eclipses in the depths of the Solar System, which he regularly shares on his Instagram and Reddit pages.
Earlier, we reported on how an astrophotographer captured the ISS against the Sun during an astronaut spacewalk.
According to Petapixel
