The Dutch Observatory

August 18, 2010 on 8:30 pm | In ISS, Moon | Comments Off

Following capturing the Sun’s transit of the ISS, we set out to capture a Moon transit.  The opportunity came on Tuesday evening at 11 minutes past midnight.  It would be an inferior transit with the ISS and moon being at an elevation of 10.6 degrees above the horizon.  In addition, at 1295 km., the ISS was three times further away than in our solar transit image.  I spend a lot of time planning and following the changes in ISS’ orbit in the days leading up to the event.  I also need to mention the help Clevis Jones gave us  with this.  Also studying the moon map to see if there was a prefered area wich we might want to try to include in the image.  I nailed it down to three possible sites and Frank Garner got us permission to setup at Mr. & Mrs Edwards property in Social Circle.  The cloud forecast was very iffy.  (See the the time-laps movie on YouTube.  The clouds finally broke five minutes before the event, and five minutes after, the moon sank behind the trees……  Here a composite image of the pass as I captured it, and an animation at approx 1/3 speed.  At the time the moon was 10.6 degrees above the horizon, the ISS at 1295 km. was three times as far from us as in our Solar transit pass from July 30st. and the seeing and transparency was terrible at this elevation.  All three of us captured the transit.  Regardless of how the images came out, this first attempt of a moon crossing was a fantastic event for all of us and a great thrill.  Thanks again to the Edwards for allowing us to be in their front pasture until long after midnight!!