Check. This. Out. Amazing photo of the Sun!

Sat May 16, 2009 12:32 am » by **Harlekin**

Oh man oh man, do I love this picture:

OK, so you look at it and say, "So what? It’s a picture of the quiet Sun seen in overcast conditions. Big deal!"

Ah, but a big deal it is. See those spots in the lower left quadrant of our nearest star? Those aren’t sunspots… here, let me show you what those are:

Yes, that is in fact the Space Shuttle Atlantis silhouetted against the Sun. But wait, there’s something else, isn’t there. What’s that spot below the Shuttle?

That, me droogs, is the Hubble Space Telescope. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

Holy Haleakala!

The exceptionally gifted astrophotographer Thierry Legault captured this stunning tableau just minutes before the crew of Atlantis caught up with and captured Hubble for its very last servicing mission on May 13, 2009. This shot has never been accomplished before, and it’s magnificent. He used a 13 cm telescope, and camera that took a series of 16 images of 1/8000th of second each.

If the style and photographer’s name are familiar, it’s because I chose a similar image from Legault of the ISS and Shuttle as #1 of my Top Ten Astronomy Images.

Until then, check out this other Shuttle+Sun image he took, posted by NASA on Flickr. Wow. That’s right out of Star Trek.

Sat May 16, 2009 12:47 am » by **Rawdney**

Wow. Thank you very much for these awesome photos. Amazing.

Sat May 16, 2009 5:56 am » by **Megavirus**

harlekin wrote:Oh man oh man, do I love this picture:

Uh its gotta be fake, I'm not sure how the photo was taken but if there was a space ship near the sun wouldn't it blend in with the sun? If it was a heat photo shot wouldn't it be so hot that it would blur its self out to wear you wouldn't get a definite shape?

Sun May 17, 2009 3:49 pm » by **Thesaint**

To Megavirus,
I don't want to sound sanctimonious but here is a small idea of the distances and perspectives that are involved. The shuttle is millions of miles away from the Sun. I will give you a rough analogy and I will still be out by thousands of times. Stand 1 mile away from a 1mm toy rocket and using the Moon as your background, take a picture. I know it may look as though that shuttle is next to the Sun but if I have got my sums right you would have to travel around the world approximately 370 times and that would be the distance between that shuttle and the Sun. The Sun is about 93million miles away from that space shuttle. I hope this has been of some use to you. Personally I find it fascinating to learn about these distances in our Solar System and Galaxy.

Sun May 17, 2009 7:29 pm » by **Cornbread714**

thesaint wrote:To Megavirus,
I don't want to sound sanctimonious but here is a small idea of the distances and perspectives that are involved. The shuttle is millions of miles away from the Sun. I will give you a rough analogy and I will still be out by thousands of times. Stand 1 mile away from a 1mm toy rocket and using the Moon as your background, take a picture. I know it may look as though that shuttle is next to the Sun but if I have got my sums right you would have to travel around the world approximately 370 times and that would be the distance between that shuttle and the Sun. The Sun is about 93million miles away from that space shuttle. I hope this has been of some use to you. Personally I find it fascinating to learn about these distances in our Solar System and Galaxy.

I think you might have missed Megavirus's point. I don't think he thought that the shuttle was close to the sun, but merely in "front" of the sun, which of course is the obvious general idea. I think he was trying to say that the brightness of the sun would be a problem in making an image like this. I think that's a valid question.
My guess (I haven't researched the photo and have no idea if it's real or not and I'm not a pro photographer or astronomer) would be that with a high shutter-speed and the right kind of filter it would be possible to avoid overexposure..
If it's real, it's awesome.
(on second read of his post, maybe he does think that it was purportedly "near" the sun.)
If that is the case, you are correct, Saint, in pointing that out (I didn't check your math but it sounds about right and its a nice perspective).

Tue May 19, 2009 7:26 am » by **Ghost32**

Could you please post the original links to these images. These are so amazing but seems that this would be very easy to fake in photo-shop. Would love to read the original webpage and how the process was done in more detail, Thanks for sharing very interesting :alien: