Shuttle and Hubble Passing In Front of the Sun

GvG was one of several readers to point out this "incredible photo clearly showing the silhouette of Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope as they passed in front of the Sun was taken Wednesday, May 13, 2009, from west of Vero Beach, Florida. The two spaceships were at an altitude of 600 km and they zipped across the sun in only 0.8 seconds." The image is all over the Web now, for good reason.

Reminds me...

[Daemonax]

Reminds me of the scene in the new Star Trek movie with all the people escaping from the Enterprise, and you see the scene with a massive star behind them, and they look like tiny specks against it.

Transit

[Brian Gordon]

Here's [wikipedia.org] a much more impressive transit.

small

[swell]

My first thought was that the picture is a reminder of our insignificance relative to the greater universe (and even the quantum universe).

But what daring goes into these missions! Tiny we may be but we have great ambition.

Re:fake?

[TinBromide]

west of vero beach is the stomping grounds of nasa engineers. I was in melbourne (like a 20 minute drive from vero beach) this past weekend and spoke with a few engineers who worked for nasa through contracts. That entire area is known as the "space coast". This was probably taken by an ex-nasa engineer or photographer. About month ago when I was up there was a rocket launch and there were probably 5-10 nasa guys in the street watching it. That area is absolutley saturated with guys who have an interest in nasa's activities and the professional know-how to do such things. While it could still be a hoax, there is nothing physically impossible and the location of origin of the photo only lends credibility.

Shocking fact

[GregoryD]

I find the most eye opening fact is that the sun is 93,000,000 miles behind the shuttle. It is an awesome display of the scale of the sun.

Re:Crappy quality

[NormalVisual]

This photo is actually of comparable quality to what you'd get from NASA, given the same conditions under which it was taken under.

Bear in mind that the photo is being taken through many, many miles of air, during the daytime, and the daytime heat causes all kinds of instabilities in the air that will show up as waviness in the image (the same phenomenon causes stars to twinkle at night). Finding steady air at night is hard enough, but getting images this clear during the day is remarkable, even taking the quick shutter speed into account.

Also bear in mind that the Sun is only about 30 arcminutes across as seen from the Earth, meaning that the Shuttle silhouette itself is at most just a very few arcseconds in size. To put it in perspective, it's on the order of getting a clear photo of the text "In God We Trust" on a dime from the other end of a (US) football field while the dime is moving at 4 feet or so per second.

Re:Reminds me...

[Tablizer]

..of course it's all a trick of perspective. Being able to see them at all against the sun is about as accurate as holding your hand up to your face and squishing the sun between your fingers.

Not sure what you mean by "accurate" here. True, a silhouette is not a view the unprotected human eye could ever see (except maybe against a brown dwarf) due to the brightness, but an alien eye, filtered eye, or camera could capture such perspective. I have a little sun filter that allows me to stare directly at the sun. I use it to watch solar eclipses while mobile.
   

Re:Astronomy Picture of the Day [ISS]

[Tablizer]

Here's one with the space-station taken a few years ago:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap060921.html [nasa.gov]
     

Re:Fly

[calzones]

it does look a lot like an orange.

more to the point: why does the brightest object in the solar system have nice shading effect to make it look spherical?

I accept that this photo has been certified legit, but that shading screams fake to me because the sun should only look like a flat disc. So the question I'm asking astronomers is to explain why the sun appears spherical instead of like a big flat bright disc?

Re:small

[T Murphy]

a reminder of our insignificance relative to the greater universe

You may have seen this already, but it is still an amazing video emphasizing this point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=855LIxE0qP0 [youtube.com]

Re:Astronomy Picture of the Day

[deglr6328]

nary a sunspot
no faculae here at all
last chance to see this

Re:Fly

[edittard]

more to the point: why does the brightest object in the solar system have nice shading effect to make it look spherical?

It doesn't. Look at the image showing the whole sun - it's dark on all sides.

Simple???

[janwedekind]

When seeing a picture of a two-thousand ton manned space ship next to a space telescope with a huge nanometer accuracy mirror being repaired by a crew of people in space suits all whizzing through space with a class G star looming in the background, "simple" was not exactly the first thing which came to my mind.