Across the Pale Moon
On the 21/02/2018 at 7:54pm the International Space Station (ISS) passed across the moon as seen from Perth, Western Australia. At this moment, the moon was 27deg above the horizon, the station being 804km from where I was, and moving at 8.9km/s with an estimated brightness of -1.9mag.
This image was taken using a standard Canon 6D through a Skywatcher 120ED with a 2 x Barlow lens. As the ISS transited across the shadow of the moon I attempted an HDR composite to try and bring out the Earth glow and thereby light-up the dark regions. To do this, the series of photos of the ISS and the sunlit side of the moon were taken at 1/400s at ISO3200, then after passing I took a 2sec exposure at ISO3200 to bring out the shadow region. HDR processing was done manually in Photoshop. You might have to zoom a little to see any detail of the ISS.
Its pretty hard to get a good result when trying to do an HDR shot of the moon, and this HDR image is a bit “so-so”. I find it much easier (and get better results) when only a sliver of the moon is illuminated. But still, relatively happy in the end…
