Jupiter and the ISS. | AJ Smadi

A photographer captured a rare shot of the International Space Station (ISS) as it whizzed past Jupiter.

“This photograph had been on my radar for nearly two years, and this past Sunday, I finally brought it to life after driving over an hour north of Seattle to Burlington, Washington, just before sunrise,” AJ Smadi tells PetaPixel .

AJ Smadi

https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2026/10/SnapInsta.to_AQNwHJg3jcWmEyztbOAMcyCvZpPIrDep-Cq1FCVkysx51NwChRVuRgL1UF_Kl4CWjswayXG9GZt0bSb-lxuFy8GX4oBW7aFYc0qienw.mp4

Remarkably, the ISS and Jupiter appear nearly identical in angular size, a coincidence caused by the fact that Jupiter was approximately 1.3 million times wider than the ISS, yet also 1.3 million times farther away at the moment of capture.

“Every month or so for the past couple years, I would check the ISS’s path across the sky and see if it would be close enough to any planets that I could align them from within Washington State,” Smadi says.

“At precisely 6:03 AM…