By Fritz Olenberger
On Monday, March 9 at about 11:24 p.m., the International Space Station made a full-moon lunar transit that was visible (with magnification) across a 4.8 mile path that passed through Santa Barbara. In the center of this path, the duration of the transit was only 0.71 seconds. I captured the event from Los Patos Way, near Stella Mare’s restaurant.
This image is a composite of frame grabs (every other frame) from a 4K video shot at 30 frames per second, at a shutter speed of 1/1000 sec. I shot the video with a Canon 5D Mk IV and 600mm lens.
Mother Nature was kind enough to provide a brief and very unexpected clearing of the sky in what was otherwise a cloudy night.
A crew of three is currently aboard the Space Station. It orbits the earth every 92 minutes, or just over 15 orbits per day. It travels at a speed of 17,100 miles per hour, at an altitude of 254 miles.