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Amateur astronomer Catalin Fus from Poland has captured one of the most amazing images I’ve ever seen – and his timing was impeccable. On March 7th at 13:05:49 UTC, just after space shuttle Discovery had undocked from the International Space Station, the two ships flew in formation directly in front of the Sun, as seen from Fus’ location just outside of Krakow. With his solar-filtered telescope focused on active sunspot region 1166, he found there were a couple extra spots in his image – Discovery and the ISS. Given that this was Discovery’s final mission in space and final visit to the ISS, this image has historical significance, as well as just being absolutely fantastic. Keep in mind that transits like this last just over a half a second.
He used the following equipment:
Telescope : 102mm f6.3 GPU oilspaced apochromat
self-made Herschel Prism + Meade TeleXtender 2x 1.25”
Mount: Losmandy G11
Camera: Canon EOS 550D
1frame @ ISO 100, 1/1000s
With just a touch of post processing done in PixInsight and PS CS5
You can see more Fus’ handiwork at his website, www.catalinfus.ro. Our thanks to Catalin for allowing Universe Today to post his incredible image.
This is great catch being the last mission of Discovery…on the 7th i was filming the Sun 3pm Est,Orlando,FL,USA a caught something that streaked across the Sun,might of been the ISS,it’s at :36 seconds at the top in the link below,watch in 720p an in full screen to see it,Enjoy!
Luckily the escaped one big massive solar flare just in time. Look how close they got LOL
It’s just OK, hun, chill out.