ISS Transits Mars

Explanation: 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 kilometers 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 last Monday at 05:15:47 local time from just northeast of San Diego , California , USA . Although typically much smaller, angularly, than the ISS, Mars is approaching its maximum angular size in the next few weeks , because the blue planet (Earth) is set to pass its closest to the red planet (Mars) in their respective orbits around the Sun.

Portal Universe: Random APOD Generator