South African Photographer Mitchell Krog tonight captured the International Space Station (ISS) fleeting across the night skies of Southern Africa. Mitchell, an award-winning photographer and specialist in Astro-Photography had selected his location for the shoot several days beforehand and planned things well in advance. At exactly 6:51pm the ISS appeared as a bright star low on the horizon and in a matter of a minute was already directly overhead and out of the frame. Through his past experiences with photographing astronomical events Mitchell had everything in place to pull of the image below which shows the International Space Station almost like a shooting star across the sky.The Space station was moving at an incredible speed and those people who did not take the time of viewing this event seriously would have missed it had they come outside a minute later. It moved across the sky from horizon to horizon in under 2 minutes. The conditions for this particular glimpse of the ISS were nothing short of perfect, the moon is currently waxing around a half moon phase giving just enough light to illuminate the foreground. The Space Station moved from the horizon in the S-S-W to the horizon in the N-E in approximately 2 minutes.
The International Space Station Fleeted Across the South African Night Skies on The 30th of August 2009 at 6:51pm. From Mitchell Krog's AstroPhotography Portfolio. (Copyright Mitchell Krog - All Rights Reserved)
John says:
Amazing picture Mitchell, I have recently become interested in photography, and would be interested to hear what lens/camera and settings were used to take this shot. I was listening to the space station at the time this picture was taken and heard APRS data coming down on 145.825 mhz extremely strongly. Unfortunately I had cloud cover and could not see it, or the shuttle “Discovery” chasing close behind it.
73,
John, ZS5J
30th August 2009 at 4:26 pm
admin says:
Thanks John, this was shot with a Nikon D3x, Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 lens (wish I could have gone even wider for this).
The exposure time was 7.5 minutes in total. Final image constructed from 30 frames @ f/4.
30th August 2009 at 1:09 pm
Elise Elk says:
WOW – I saw the space station literally run actross the sky and your photograph really showed the speed of the space station dancing accross the sky …
30th August 2009 at 2:25 pm