Astrophotographer AJ Smadi captures rare daytime Venus‑ISS alignment in Seattle

On 23 July 2025, astrophotographer AJ Smadi photographed a daytime conjunction of Venus and the International Space Station (ISS) from a park in Seattle, Washington. The image was posted to his Instagram on 25 July after a year‑long planning effort that began in April 2025, when he first documented the same alignment and earned a NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day selection.

Using a 23.5 cm Celestron Schmidt‑Cassegrain telescope paired with a ZWO ASI662MC camera fitted with ultraviolet and infrared filters, Smadi calculated the ISS trajectory (≈7.5 km s⁻¹) and the relative position of Venus (about 135 million km away) to time the shot. He highlighted that the capture was made during daylight, a condition that required precise atmospheric and lighting calculations. Smadi said his next goal is to obtain a image where the two objects appear to touch.

The achievement demonstrates advanced amateur astrophotography techniques and has drawn attention from the space‑science community for its technical difficulty.