Surely I'm not the only one who has their bucket list of shots.
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I'm lucky enough to have even pulled a few of them off already, which is pretty awesome.

Last week, I got to check another one off that list! ⬇️⬇️⬇️

To me, photography (especially astrophotography) scratches two itches: the need to document something beautiful, and the need to master something highly technical.
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This image certainly checks both of those boxes!

About the shot:

For the last few years, I have kept an eye on ​transit-finder.com​. It's the best place to find out where you need to be (and when) to catch the moment when, in the span of under one second, the International Space Station transits the moon. Last week, the stars finally aligned (pun intended) and I was lucky enough to see that there was a spot I could shoot this event from just 15 minutes from my home. I made my way out there at around 1:30 am and set up three cameras:
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1. Sony A7IV + 400-800 G Lens (which ironically I had been trying to sell for months with no success) on my Benro Polaris (a motorized gimball head which tracked the moon so that it stayed in frame). This is the setup I used for the above image.
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2. Sony A7IV + 200-600 G Lens for the video flyby!
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3. ZV-E1 + 24mm f/1.4 GM for BTS.

Check out the videos in my post here!
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After getting set up, I got out an atomic clock app to get precise timing ready. The transit was to occur over the span of .78 of one second - I had to start shooting right before that! At 2:43:15 am I got the shot, and boy was I elated.
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Equally challenging - the edit:

The following few days I spent post-processing. I am not particularly skilled in lunar photography or processing, so there was a bit of a learning curve here. I used the following shots to create the above composite:
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Out of the 380 frames I shot of the moon that night, about 100 ended up being stacked for the illuminated side of the moon. Stacking this way helps to eliminate some lack of sharpness caused by the turbulence in the atmosphere. If you had a chance to watch the video in my post, you'll see what I'm talking about. It kinda looks like it's under water - the air distorts the sharpness randomly.
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For the unlit side, I used an image of the moon from months ago when that side was illuminated. I know, this is where things deviate from reality; it is practically impossible to expose for the unlit side, so some compositing is necessary here.
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The glow around the moon was captured separately on the night of the transit. I used that same shot to extract the stars as well (I was kind of proud of this as a lot of people fake the starfield behind the moon, but mine is real).
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Lastly, I composited the six shots of the ISS transiting. The tricky part here was that the sharpness (and lack of noise) in the stacked moon was a very noticeable difference from the ISS shots which are single exposures. To combat this, I upscaled their resolution in Lightroom before compositing and used a very small black brush to help clean up the edges where they were lacking in detail.
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The resulting image is one I am proud of, and I hope you enjoy it as well!

In case you love it:

or at least download the free wallpaper ⬆️ ;)

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