I've been waiting for this shot for a while... The International Space Station with Crew 8 on its orbital path brought it across the crescent Moon on Saturday night. I've been watching its path projections for a few weeks to make sure I would have the location right, so when Saturday night arrived, I drove out to the coordinates in Alachua and set up my little telescope as well as my Fuji with the 600mm (900mm effective) lens on and began waiting. I knew I had to be on my toes because the projection can sometimes be off by a few seconds, and that's all it would take to miss this shot since it lasts only a few seconds itself. I had my countdown timer app going just to make sure. As 9:22 closed in, I hit record video on the scope and glued my eyes to my camera viewfinder.... would I catch it? I wasn't sure. I had missed my last attempt. Then all of a sudden my eye caught a glimpse of what looked tiny bug in my viewfinder and I knew instantly... NOW NOW! I told myself, as I pressed in and held the trigger of my shutter release and at the same time, breathed a sigh of relief as I watched it fly across the crescent Moon off and out of the frame on its continued journey around the Earth, all in a matter of two seconds.

YESSSS!! I danced a little in glee (I was by myself, nobody to see) and softly exclaimed into the dark night, "I got it! I GOT IT!", then quickly texted my husband and Mom because I was so excited.

This was special to me because on March 4, 2024, I also captured the ISS Crew 8 as they launched into orbit toward the Space Station (see that image by clicking HERE and HERE.
), relieving Crew 7 from their duties. They continue to conduct experiments and gather data on their 6-month stay. Hopefully, I will yet capture their Solar transit as they cross the Sun, and their splashdown as they return to Earth sometime in September of this year.

EDIT: On May 30, I captured a streak shot as they passed over The Cove HERE.

Below, the first image is from my Fuji camera with a shutter speed of 1/1000, and the second is a video from the telescope slowed to half speed for better viewing.

ISS Lunar Transit ISS Lunar Transit VIDEO