Capturing The ISS Transiting The Moon DURING THE DAY!

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]Come on.

[00:00:06]Oh, I saw it. I actually I saw it. I'm not even joking. I saw it.

[00:00:12]Okay, so it's windy. Holy moly. We made it to the designated shooting location.

[00:00:17]And the moon is somewhere up there. I don't really know where it is, but I couldn't find it earlier. There are a little bit of clouds which is I don't want to say worrisome but I mean there's just there's a 50-50 chance. It is what it is. I'm really hoping I can get the shot today but we've arrived. So let's set everything up. I'm thinking behind the car maybe so the telescope doesn't literally overheat and burn. But we're going to figure it out all right now. Now I got to got to take everything out of the car and let's set up.

[00:00:54]Okay, it is so hot out right now. It's not even funny. I'm kind of prolonging putting the scope. Is that the word?

[00:01:02]Delaying. I'm delaying the time that I need or the I'm delaying. What am I trying to say here? I'm kind of delaying putting the scope on so it doesn't overheat and then cuz when I try to put it away, it's going to be like 1,000°.

[00:01:16]Got the mount all ready. I'm all uh level. I'm all leveled, polar aligned roughly. Um I just used a compass on my phone pointed north. I think it's about 80 almost 90° out today. So that is very hot, toasty one today. So, okay, let's get some power up in here. I'm obviously not going to turn anything on until we're ready to shoot. power. Some more power. A little bit of this. A little bit of that. Some more power over here.

[00:01:45]Some more power over there. Some power right here. Power right there. And finally, our camera cable. All right, everything's all set up. Pretty much all I have to do now is put the telescope on, attach the camera, and then plug the camera into the computer. And some incredibly large clouds heading towards us, but they are moving slow. Can't say anything for sure, but hopefully hopefully I'm able to get this shot. I know this thing's about to get so hot so fast. Not even funny.

[00:02:15]Ow. Oh, I took off the wrong screw. No, bro.

[00:02:23]Dang, that sucked. I took off the top screw instead of the bottom screw.

[00:02:28]Okay, so I did my best to columnate or align the mirrors last night with a star. Um, I don't know if you ever columnated before, but I I'm really bad at it.

[00:02:43]So hopefully my mirrors are aligned and it gives us a sharp image. If not, that would suck.

[00:02:54]Big scope's on. I did bring the de shield so when I'm looking near the sun I don't accidentally fry any of my equipment because that would suck. But got the de shield, got the mount, got the freaking telescope. So everything's set up now. Alls we got to do is wait and hopefully the skies allow us to get a good image. I mean that's all we can do right now. Okay, we got about 14 sec or no? Wait, hang on. What's the time?

[00:03:27]I don't think I'm focused, but we're going to go for it.

[00:03:36]Come on.

[00:03:42]Oh, I saw it. I actually I saw it. I'm not even joking. I saw it. That was so cool. I really hope I got something. Oh my gosh.

[00:03:52]I really hope I got something. Oh my gosh.

[00:03:57]Oh, so stressful. I s I saw it go past.

[00:04:01]Holy moly. I was literally I couldn't find the moon for like 10 minutes and I was frantically trying to find the moon and I don't even know if I was in focus, but I'm glad I found the moon and I can't Oh, wow. Oh, it's so stressful those last couple minutes. Holy moly. I really hope you could see it. That was amazing. I mean, oh, I hope I exposed correctly. I went with 1 millisecond exposure. I mean, I hope hope that worked. Okay, to put in perspective how hard this was. Look, look at this.

[00:04:32]That's the moon. It is so thin. And the ISS just went stre right across the screen. Hopefully, we got it. I'm not sure. But look at that. That is so hard to see and focus off of. I wasn't recording me trying to find the moon with the telescope because I was so frantic. I couldn't find the moon. it. I had to like point around, try and focus the scope. I could not find the moon at all. It is so dim during the day when it's a crescent moon. I just could not find it. But I'm glad I did. Hopefully, I got something. The ISS, like I said, it did look a little bright, but when we process it, hopefully it looks just as good as I saw it on the screen. I will see you guys. I need to go get something to eat. I am starving. I'm going to get uh two hamburgers and a 10piece, please.

[00:05:15]>> All right, we're back at the house. Now it's time to see if we actually captured what we think we captured. The International Space Station flying in front of the moon or kind of next to it really I guess. Okay, so these are my two files here. This is where the moon or where the video was captured. Um it is a color video so you can there's a dust spot right there but you can see the moon along this uh literally just kind of dividing the screen in half there. And then here is the processed file. I haven't looked at anything yet. I haven't looked at the file, the videos, the photos. But what I've done is I've taken the video and broken every frame up into a picture.

[00:05:55]And now we can look individually at every single frame we captured. So here's all the frames. And if we sort through, we should find one or at least a couple a handful of frames with the International Space Station flying across the screen. Let's do some diving.

[00:06:16]I didn't see any right off the bat.

[00:06:19]Um.

[00:06:23]Oh, wait. I think here they come. Okay, here we go. Oh, you can see.

[00:06:32]Oh my gosh. I've never captured it like this before.

[00:06:45]Oh my gosh, look at that.

[00:06:50]Oh, we got it. Oh my gosh. I cannot believe that. Exposed properly and everything. Look at that.

[00:06:59]That is amazing. Wait, here we got it.

[00:07:01]Got it. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Eight whole frames of the International Space Station clear as day.

[00:07:14]That is so cool.

[00:07:17]Oh wow, look at that. Oh my gosh, that makes it all worth it. I I was getting worried. There's literally people in there right now. That is such a good freaking picture. All right, let's process this even more and see what we can find. Holy moly. All right, guys.

[00:07:32]I'm done processing the photos. They look absolutely amazing. I've stacked all the photos, edited them in Photoshop, and now I'm ready to show you the final results. So, here they are right here. I obviously have a lot of different angles and kind of ways to look at the image uh to post on Instagram. But this is the main one here. International Space Station Crescent Transit. And this is what it looks like. Here's the final image. It looks absolutely unbelievable. I can't believe it all came together and we actually got it. But I mean, if you just look in here, so here's the crescent moon is what it looked like during the day. We got a little gradient go gradient going on here with the sunlight coming in and then a little darker over here. Um, and then if you zoom in, the International Space Station looks super super sharp and clear transiting right across the edge of the lower limb of the crescent moon there.

[00:08:24]At a loss for words pretty much, I can't believe I actually got this shot. I'm super happy with how it turned out. All right, and that pretty much wraps it up.

[00:08:31]I hope you enjoyed the journey it took me to get this image. If you want the full slideshow of all these images, the link to the Instagram post will be in the description below. I hope you enjoyed. I'll see you guys in the next video.