The International Space Station is not near the moon. This is about 1,000 times more than Earth.
However, new snapshots from skilled space photographers make the orbital lab appear to be skittering across the moon.
New images taken by Andrew James McCarthy on February 5th assemble the famous landmark of the moon near Antarctica and the space station. This site is a potential future landing site for NASA astronauts.
Many photos of McCarthy’s past taking space stations show the ship as silhouettes of the Earth’s shadow. This time he caught it in direct sunlight along with the so-called moon terminator. Also known as the Twilight Zone, the line separates the light and dark side of the moon.
“This might be my new favorite,” he told Mashable. “What I like about this is that it’s illuminated, so here’s the ISS actually has dimensions. I’ve been illuminated before, but it wasn’t at this high resolution.”
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The International Space Station is lit up as it crosses the front of the moon on February 5th, 2025.
Credit: Andrew James McCarthy
The arrested image shows the hard geometric lines of the spacecraft and is spotted with craters and long dramatic shadows, contrary to the organic swells of the moon.
Getting shots of a few cynics on the internet wasn’t as easy as clicking a button. Painful plans, several equipment breakdowns, rides from beaten paths, thousands of frames, perfect timing had to be overcome. The space station spans the length of an American soccer field with its end zone and flies at about 17,000 miles or five miles per second. The entire event may have been overlooked in the blink of an eye.
McCarthy, a former manager of a high-tech startup, pursued astrophotography after losing his job due to a layoff before the Covid-19 pandemic. Over the years, he developed insight and shot all sorts of astronomical phenomena. He now makes a living from high-resolution photos that can be blown away into giant prints.
The perfect view of the International Space Station appears as a bright spot on the top right during the moon’s transport on February 5th, 2025.
Credit: Andrew McCarthy
Earlier this month, McCarthy discovered there were two consecutive days of space station transits that would make good photo shoot opportunities. Not only are they relatively close, but the telemetry app showed that the space station appears to have a large angular size, as it is located above the horizon.
Masculine light speed
His first attempt on February 4th took him to Yuma, Arizona. After obtaining permission from the business owner, he set up gears in a dedicated parking lot. The equipment included a Canon R5 with 14-inch and 11-inch telescopes, cameras, mobile phones and a 1,000-mm telephoto lens.
A few seconds before the shipment, one of McCarthy’s laptops quit, and the 14-inch Dobson telescope didn’t work.
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In astrophotography, getting a shot can be an odds game, so I decided to try again the next day. This time, the predicted route of the transit took him to a remote location about 35 miles east of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.
There was nothing on the road, but the dirt road off the coast of Highway 60 was apparently open to the public. He barely knew that the road would be very narrow, the thorny Cholla Cacti rubbed on either side of his car.
McCarthy pulled in as little liquidation as possible. The ground was uneven, so he held the rocks under the telescope to maintain the level. He then set up StarLink to connect to high-speed internet.
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The wind whipped, and the sun glowed in his eyes. McCarthy wasn’t sloppy.
“I definitely filmed in a bad place,” he said.
McCarthy’s laptop crashed again, almost failing the session. He made the dangerous decision to replace the computer just at Nick in time. The photo exposed 1/5,000 seconds, he said.
McCarthy then continued taking photos to fill in the remaining moon at the same focal length. He then sewed them together to form a mosaic. Each panel consists of approximately 2,000 stacked photographs. The raw images were taken in black and white, so the second camera, the Canon R5, captured the colors.
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In this age of artificial intelligence and image generators, the public doesn’t always believe that such extraordinary photographs are real. McCarthy spends a lot of time on social media and his website, showing “receipts” for his work. He posts the original raw image and how it works.
That convinces some. Others remain skeptical.
“A lot of astrophotography is about sharing something invisible. Something so faint that you can’t even see it with your eyes,” he said.
