Guy Captures Space Station Flying Over Neil Armstrong¡¯s Footprints On Moon

Backyard astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy who is popular on Instagram as @cosmic_background has now captured the International Space Station while it flew by the footprints of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first two men on the Moon.

Andrew McCarthy

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McCarthy reveals that zooming in on the image won¡¯t really reveal the footprints (since they¡¯d be so tiny). However, the ISS was captured while it was next to the 3.37-kilometre long crater that was named after Buzz Aldrin. The crater was to the left of the station.

In fact, to put things into perspective, McCarthy explains that the width of the station would actually span over 112 kilometres on the moon.

McCarthy reveals that this image was captured at a very precise location at 2:06:57 AM Mountain Standard Time (which is around 2:36 PM India time).

However, in case you thought McCarthy got his sweet time to get the perfect shot, a short video shared by him showed how fast the ISS flew by. To the unaware, the ISS travels at a speed of 28,000 kilometres per hour. McCarthy had also circled the Apollo landing site (in a red circle).

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Here it is in roughly real time. In order to capture the station precisely over the landing site, I had to have my camera running at over 150fps. The ISS covered the entire moon in a half second, so you can see how quickly it was in this narrow frame. pic.twitter.com/phrQuDflhs

¡ª Andrew McCarthy (@AJamesMcCarthy) January 19, 2022

In a reply to a fellow follower, he revealed that the ISS was in the frame of the camera for around 1/8th of a second with the total time it took to cross the whole moon being just half a second.

Along with the close flyby image, McCarthy shared an image of the full moon, glowing in all its glory.

Andrew McCarthy

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McCarthy said that the weather was very much in favour last night to get a shot like this.

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