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IN A GALAXY not far away, a stargazer has captured mesmerizing photos of the International Space Station in which the orbiting laboratory looks like a TIE fighter from the Star Wars universe.
Senior astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy from California snapped the $ 150 billion spacecraft as it passed in front of both the Moon and the Sun.
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The result is what may be the sharpest photo of the ISS, orbiting 400 km above the Earth, ever taken from our planet.
The two images were taken last month. Andrew said that the photo of the ISS in front of the sun in broad daylight was “one of my most complicated shots ever”.
Sharing the photo on his Instagram page, he wrote: “For less than a second, the sun aligned with the ISS and my backyard.
“This recovery is the result of planning, timing and equipment.
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“I used two telescopes with the cameras, one with a white light filter for ISS detail and a solar telescope for surface detail.
“I was able to freeze a moment in time when the station was near some interesting prominences, so I aligned and merged the final images to get the perfect composition.”
And just a few days later, Andrew was lucky enough to see the ISS again, this time, crawling on a tiny crescent moon in the night sky.
He wrote on Instagram: “There is nothing more beautiful than this.
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What is the ISS?
Here’s what you need to know about the International Space Station …
- The International Space Station, often abbreviated to ISS, is a large spacecraft that orbits the Earth and hosts astronauts who travel up there to complete scientific missions
- Many countries have worked together to build it and work together to use it
- It is made up of many pieces, which astronauts had to send individually on rockets and assembled from 1998 to 2000
- Since the year 2000, people have lived on the ISS
- NASA uses the station to learn how to live and work in space
- It is located about 250 miles above the Earth and orbits the planet just like a satellite
- Living inside the ISS is said to be like living in a large house with five bedrooms, two bathrooms, a gym, many science labs, and a large window to observe the Earth.
“I spent hours looking for the right place, hoping to capture something I had never seen before: the ISS passing by on a razor-thin crescent moon.
“Something about the way the illuminated ISS straddles the crescent gives a sense of depth that I had not yet been able to capture in my previous transit shots.”
Andrew is one of the most popular astrophotographers on the web, with over 300,000 Instagram followers.
It went viral last year after sharing an incredibly detailed image of the Moon made up of 50,000 photos digitally stitched together.
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In other news, NASA has finally set a date for its first fully manned flight from US soil aboard a SpaceX rocket.
SpaceX recently blew up a Starship rocket tank during a dramatic “pressure test”.
The missile company completed its second starship test flight in October.
What do you think of the photos of the ISS? Let us know in the comments!
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