‘Like a Star Wars TIE fighter’
Amateur astronomer Jono Townsend is pretty stoked with his first attempt to get footage of the International Space Station as it orbits the Earth.
‘‘It kind of looks like a Star Wars TIE fighter,’’ he said.
Townsend managed to capture the station whizzing across the face of the Moon. The silhouette of the craft clearly shows what could be wings – or whatever those things on the side of the TIE fighters are.
The Christchurch man was able to capture the footage due to the absence of light from the Sun, because of the curvature of the Earth, reflecting off the spacecraft.
‘‘Normally when you have the International Space Station flying over . . . it is usually illuminated by the Sun, so you see it as a bright star shooting across the sky,’’ Townsend said. ‘‘But last night it was in complete shadow. You could only see it as a silhouette as it went across the face of the Moon.’’
He checked online where he needed to be to get the footage, then travelled 37 kilometres from his home to the north of Christchurch to the right location.
‘‘And right down to the very second they said it was going to fly over, it did,’’ he said. ‘‘From my backyard in Christchurch, I would have missed it entirely.’’
He got the footage ‘‘at precisely 22.07 and 54 seconds’’ on Thursday. The space station was travelling at nearly 7.7km per second, and the crossing of the face of the Moon ‘‘took all of 0.67 seconds’’.
A still image from the footage shows the space station, which has six crew on board, over Mare Serenitatis – the Sea of Serenity – a dark basaltic plain formed by ancient volcanic eruptions. The camera used was not great but it had a good zoom, Townsend said.
‘‘It was just a matter of getting the right focus and pointing it at the Moon.
‘‘Basically I had an exact time. I got set up, let the event play out and saw it happen in the viewfinder. I got probably a little over-excited. I’m pretty stoked with it, actually.’’
He hoped his footage would encourage more people to take an interest in space.