Rare moment space station passes moon captured on camera

An Australian astronomer and photographer has taken a "perfect" photo of the International Space Station (ISS) passing in front of the Moon.

Ken Lawson, from Geraldton in western Australia, said he waited for "about eight years" for it to occur and added that "it is similar to a solar eclipse, it doesn't happen very often".

He told ABC News: "You need all the elements to combine together to get it in the right position."

The ISS is the biggest human-made structure in Space and orbits Earth about 15 times a day at a speed of 28,000 kilometres an hour.

Mr Lawson, who has been taking photographs on and off all his life, said he had been taking his passion "professionally and seriously for the last 10 years".

And on 14 March, he took a photo of the Space station passing between Earth and the Moon, using a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV camera.

The photographer had received a notification from a website called CalSky, which sends alerts about transits.

It alerted him to the ISS about to pass in front of the Moon and that the path was going to be "right in the middle of Geraldton".

When asked why he waited so long to capture the photograph, he told Sky News: "It's an iconic image, that you see very rarely. It's amazing to capture a thing that takes less than a second to occur."

He added: "It's so fleeting and to be able to capture that in time forever - that is pretty amazing."