A student at Xi'an Jiaotong University snapped a photo of the Tiangong space station flying over the campus, which has won praises on social media.

A photo taken by Ren Yufeng at Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU) shows the Tiangong space station flying over iHarbour.

"On Oct 16, the news that China's ShenZhou-13 crewed spacecraft successfully launched made me very excited," said Ren Yufeng, the first-year PhD student at XJTU's School of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

"I've watched a lot of pictures of objects flying over landmarks, so I wanted to take the photo of the China space station flying over XJTU to express my love for my school and my country in this way," Ren said.

Before shooting, Ren made some preparations. Together with other two space enthusiasts, he checked the time, angle, and brightness of the space station so as to find the optimal time to capture it above iHarbour, a building on the university campus.

In the early morning on Nov 13, Ren set up his camera to take pictures and waited for the space station. "The space station was like a very bright star across the sky, but vanished in the dark in a minute," Ren said.

"To take pictures of celestial bodies flying past landmark buildings, first of all, it is necessary to know the flight path of artificial celestial bodies, and find the relative position of the flight path and landmark buildings," Ren said.

Ren Yufeng, a first-year doctoral student at the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at XJTU.

Ren is majoring in aerospace science and technology. Taking photographs is a positive motivator for him. Many of his works have been posted on the school's social media accounts.

Ren also shot a short video of the Perseid meteor shower in August, capturing a fireball exploding in the middle of a field with smoke curling up in the air. The video has been viewed more than 100,000 times.