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No, these aren’t sunspots finally appearing on our currently quiet sun. Check out these amazing images taken by photographer Thierry Legault. The “spots” are actually the space shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope transiting across the sun! Legault’s website says these are the only images ever taken of a transit of a shuttle and the HST in front of the Sun. Legault was in Florida at the time he took this image, about 100 km south of the Kennedy Space Center on May 13th 2009 12:17 local time, several minutes before grapple of Hubble by Atlantis. The transit only lasted .8 seconds, and Legault was able to snap 4 images a second, getting a total of 16 different shots of the entire event (he started shooting 2 seconds before the predicted transit.)
He took another image the previous day of just the shuttle transiting (see below.)
Here, space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette during solar transit, on Tuesday, May 12, 2009, also taken from Florida. This image was taken made before Atlantis and the crew of STS-125 had caught up with the Hubble Space Telescope.
Amazing!
Oh wow! that is just fantastic.
VERY cool image! Since the time between grapple and berthing of HST was delayed (in order to check that Hubble was in drift mode), it made several orbits with the scope at the end of the robotic arm. Possibly some lucky amateurs caught this configuration in a dark sky with a suitably equipped telescope. Both the shuttle & HST should have been easy to resolve ( in the proper orientation). That would be pretty cool, too!
Awesome!!!. The SS was at most a few hundred miles/kilometers up, while the hugh Sun we take for granted, is 1AU away.!!!!
Amazing !
This is so stunning! I am sure this is gonna be discussed in my nerdclub this weekend!!! (8
Unbelieveable the space shuttle and telescope don’t melt!!
Anthony Ayiomamitis, a well know greek astrophotographer has also photographed the ISS with the Sun see picture here: http://www.perseus.gr/Astro-Sat-Trans-2005-07-28.htm
“Unbelieveable the space shuttle and telescope don’t melt!!”
I hear they lose some wing panels from time to time though. “Call me Icarus.”
One word: Hoax!!
Just saw these images, great shots they are.