Photographer Captures ‘ISS’ passing between Jupiter and Saturn

The previous evening, photographers and stargazers around the globe were treated to receive the Great Conjunction, an occasion where Jupiter and Saturn showed up nearer to one another in the sky than they have for a very long time.

Countless photographs were without a doubt snapped of the uncommon sight, yet picture taker Jason De Freitas caught an especially fortunate one a couple of days prior indicating the ISS speeding between the two planets.

While Jupiter and Saturn show up near one another in the sky once like clockwork or thereabouts, the last time they were as close as during The Great Conjunction was back on March 4, 1226, or 794 years prior.

While intending to photo the combination of Jupiter and Saturn, De Freitas understood that he could likewise incorporate the ISS in the frame.

“I had the incredible luck of figuring out I could see the path of the International Space Station travelling through the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction,” De Freitas says.

After a lot of arranging, on December seventeenth, De Freitas drove 60 minutes — “quite a short distance in the scheme of things,” he says — to an area where everything would be adjusted impeccably for his shot.

At around 9:54pm from Jellore Lookout in New South Wales, Australia, De Freitas pointed his Pentax 67 and Takumar 600mm f/4 at the planets and caught a 10-second introduction on Fujifilm Provia 100f film. The following was finished with a Skywatcher NEQ6 central mount.

“Probably the most unique shot I’ve ever taken,” De Freitas says. “[S]omehow everything on the night worked out. Beyond thrilled with this one.

“The timing of this was down to the second and I still can’t believe I pulled it off.”