International Space Station Conjunction with Saturn

Photographer Tom Glenn traveled to the exotic locale of the parking lot of Red Hawk Elementary School in Temecula, CA, between Los Angeles and San Diego California (33.4688N, -117.0984W) on 2022-06-24 in order to capture the International Space Station (ISS) passing close to the planet Saturn in the sky. He used a video camera with an exposure time of one millisecond to freeze the rapidly-moving (7.4 km/sec) ISS.

The ISS, at magnitude -3, was 25 times brighter than Saturn (magnitude 0.5), as is apparent from the surface brightness in the video. The apparent size of the ISS and Saturn (including its ring system) is about the same, as Saturn is somewhat more distant.

6 Likes

Very cool!

The fact that he could expose both Saturn and the ISS without saturating the sensor is remarkable for me. Did some digging to figure out the equipment and it turns out he has some heavy duty astro photography gear.

Equipment details:

The ZWO camera is almost inexpensive at about one thousand EUR. But the real star - no pun intended - is figuring out when and where in the sky to point the “little” Celestron

3 Likes