Photo credit: Nicholas D’Alessandro via PetaPixel
Photographer Nicholas D’Alessandro happened to be in the right place and time this past Saturday to capture a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket passing in front of a full moon. He used a Canon R5 DSLR with a Sigma 150-600 lens and a 2x teleconverter to achieve a 1200mm optical zoom after 3-days of waiting, since the initial launch was scrubbed due to weather.
The sounds of happy rocket photographers having days of hard work and planning finally pay off 🚀🌔 pic.twitter.com/HiJfgKAeP0
— Nicky D’Alessandro (@NickyXPhoto) October 10, 2022
This launch transported Intelsat’s Galaxy 33 (G-33) and Galaxy 34 (G-34) satellites into orbit, both of which are set to relay C-band video and television programming for media networks as well as cable providers across North America. What could be better than being in the right place and time for a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch? Probably being on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship with Starlink internet.
- High Image Quality featuring a New 45 Megapixel Full-frame CMOS Sensor.
- DIGIC X Image Processor with an ISO range of 100-51200; Expandable to 1024001.
- High-Speed Continuous Shooting of up to 12 fps with Mechanical Shutter and up to 20 fps Electronic (Silent) Shutter.
A rocket enthusiast and programmer named Declan Murphy made a breakthrough for rocket photographers in recent years by developing an app called Flight Club that overlays any upcoming launch trajectory with the features of the sky in predictive real time and even what your frame will look like based on the camera equipment info you enter. It isn’t laser perfect yet, but it’s accurate enough to make planning long exposure rocket path streak shots and celestial body shots suddenly far more accessible,” said D’Alessandro.
