Space station silhouette

Every so often a beautiful image appears and this is another great one, a silhouette of the ISS with shuttle Endeavour docked passing in front of the sun. We have seen a few of these before and this one is of great quality and these type of photos are not the easiest to take. Taken by French astrophotographer Thierry Legault, it is also worth checking his site out linked under his name through space weather.com.


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/75e602b43b8c.jpg[/atsimg]

"The silhouette shows space shuttle Endeavour docked to the ISS," he says. "The shuttle's payload bay arm is visible, too."

Legault has taken many pictures of spaceships passing in front of the sun. When he stands beside the telescope at the moment of transit, listening to the camera click, there is no assurance of a good shot. "I never know if the ship will be visible or not, or if the seeing will give good or bad images. The discovery of the silhouette on the computer screen later is the moment I prefer and is a great pleasure."

The ISS will be transiting the French sun again, perhaps several times, in the weeks ahead, says Legault. Stay tuned for snapshots

spaceweather.com...

[edit on 28-7-2009 by pazcat]

Cool picture!

The sun is HUGE though... everytime I see pictures of it, I'm amazed by how big it is, and hence reminded of how small we are.

Funny thing is, the sun is SMALL compared to most other stars.


Space pics are awesome!

Wow, I'm so glad I stumbled across this post. Starred, Flagged and Bookmarked.

What an awesome photo, thanks for sharing

Nice Picture S&F ..


But how did the iss get so close to the sun , or is the sun that small ??

Originally posted by ChemBreather

But how did the iss get so close to the sun , or is the sun that small ??

I think its more that the ISS is really close to the camera, and the sun is particularly large!!

reply to post by ChemBreather


I did shrink the picture down a bit the full version is in spaceweather. Its probably just a very small area of the sun close to the edge, i did think the same thing though.
The ISS is still in orbit around earth though, which is what makes these photos so hard to pinpoint.
The guy has some great photos at www.astrophoto.fr...

Okey, Im ending the sarcasm right here...

I was been sarcastic, but you guys took it well. Thankx !!

i'm in a wierd mood to day, sore throut, spray day ..

[edit on 28/7/2009 by ChemBreather]

Sorry about that, you just never though sometimes around here

Hope you feel better soon.

Originally posted by pazcat
Sorry about that, you just never though sometimes around here

Hope you feel better soon.

Takker og bukker.. Thanks !!

I heard they want to stop the ISS and move on to the Final frontier ?
What will they do with the ISS? Slam it into the moon , or maybe into some ones house

reply to post by pazcat


I have to be the first to call "PhotoShop"!!!

(Seems it's the thing to do....)

OK...now that that's outta the way, we shall have no illinformed blokes coming along with htose sorts of claims, ever again (in my fantasies...)

Beaut of a photo, cat, thanks for finding and bringin'!!

Purr!!

Originally posted by axehappy
Cool picture!

The sun is HUGE though... everytime I see pictures of it, I'm amazed by how big it is, and hence reminded of how small we are.

Funny thing is, the sun is SMALL compared to most other stars.


Space pics are awesome!

Yeah it amazes me too.

Still....there are stars out there that are bigger than that. The biggest KNOWN star would bigger than our solarsystem...=P

And great pic.

Just read that the ISS takes only 1/8 of a second to pass the sun, so whoever took this has some good reactions or was very lucky

reply to post by mattpryor



yeah, the guy never knows at the time of taking the photos if they will work or not. But this time he got it spot on.

Awesome find. S&F

The beauty of the universe never ceases to amaze me.

reply to post by mattpryor


Which is why these shots require a lot of planning, an accurately synced watch, and a continuous shooting mode on your camera. Basically you start holding the button down a few seconds before ISS is supposed to cross the sun, and continue holding for a few seconds after it should cross the sun, just to be safe. His camera has an 8 frame/second burst mode, so he was basically guaranteed to see something in at least one shot even on a short 1/8th second pass. Generally it takes closer to .5 seconds to cross the sun though.

Interesting to me that we had some individuals here accusing this same amateur of fakery when he shot the shuttle next to hubble in front of the sun, but they seem to have gone silent for this photo. I wonder why?

[edit on 28-7-2009 by ngchunter]

Reminds me of the movie "Sunshine", great capture

Love pictures like this, reminds you of how friggin huge the sun is!

wow it looks that big and its 90/95 million miles away lmao!

reply to post by ngchunter


Its interesting how people can scream fake about something that they can do themselves, i know its not as easy as just going out with a camera but really with some time and effort and of course the hard part the right tools anybody can do it.

I personally love the pics of Atlantis and the ISS but i think this one comes close to topping that.

reply to post by pazcat

What a great picture - my new desktop

Thanks for posting that.

I'll have a look at that guys site.....it sounds very interesting.