{"id":288703,"date":"2025-07-24T19:40:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T19:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/288703\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T19:40:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T19:40:19","slug":"this-photographer-managed-to-line-up-saturn-and-the-iss-in-the-same-shot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/288703\/","title":{"rendered":"This Photographer Managed to Line Up Saturn and the ISS in the Same Shot"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a>Banger. AJ Smadi spent days planning this shot of Saturn and the ISS. <\/p>\n

An amateur astrophotographer captured a remarkable shot showing the International Space Station (ISS) and Saturn in the same frame. <\/p>\n

Smadi says he planned the shot for two days and traveled 50 miles to get himself in the right spot to line up the two very different celestial objects. <\/p>\n

Even though the two objects look vaguely the same size in the image, there was in fact 1.39 billion kilometers (roughly 863.7 million miles) apart, which is a testament to the immense size of the gas giant. <\/p>\n

\u201cI used the Stellarium app alongside coordinate calculations to find a location where these two bodies would meet,\u201d Smadi writes on Instagram. \u201cProud to say I\u2019m one of just a handful of humans to capture this event.\u201d <\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n

Smadi also shared his RAW file, which shows a much darker Saturn. This, he explains, is because of the \u201cinverse square law of light,\u201d which states that the intensity of light is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source, meaning Saturn\u2019s brightness drops rapidly due to it being outside of the inner solar system \u2014 the four terrestrial planets. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe conditions were phenomenal, but the Station was quite far away at the time of the image, so it isn\u2019t the sharpest. However, Saturn looks amazing, so I\u2019m honestly just stoked with that image itself,\u201d Smadi adds.<\/p>\n

Smadi used a Celestron Nexstar Evolution 9.25\u2033 telescope with a ZWO ASI662MC camera to capture the image. <\/p>\n

NASA APOD <\/p>\n

Smadi\u2019s image got picked up by NASA for its Astronomy Picture of the Day feature<\/a> on July 18. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThis month, bright planet Saturn rises in evening skies, its rings oriented nearly edge-on when viewed from planet Earth. And in the early morning hours on July 6, it posed very briefly with the International Space Station when viewed from a location in Federal Way, Washington, USA,\u201d NASA writes of Smadi\u2019s image. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis well-planned image, a stack of video frames, captures their momentary conjunction in the same telescopic field of view. With the ISS in low Earth orbit, space station and gas giant planet were separated by almost 1.4 billion kilometers. <\/p>\n

\u201cTheir apparent sizes are comparable but the ISS was much brighter than Saturn and the ringed planet\u2019s brightness has been increased for visibility in the stacked image. Precise timing and an exact location were needed to capture the ISS\/Saturn conjunction.\u201d <\/p>\n

Smadi has a track record of capturing exciting photos of the ISS, he captured an impressively clear shot<\/a> of it not long ago, and he\u2019s captured amazing images of Saturn before too, recording a solar eclipse on the planet<\/a> in June. <\/p>\n

More of Smadi\u2019s work can be found on his Instagram<\/a> and Reddit<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Image credits:<\/strong> AJ Smadi.<\/p>\n