May 16, 2009: Silhouettes on the Sun

"From within, a dim light cast two silhouettes on the shade
Oh, what a lovely couple they ma-ade"

Bad Astronomy Blog has this wonderful picture, taken by Thierry Legault, of the lovely couple... just before they... uh, coupled.



The lovely couple are Atlantis and Hubble, of course.

...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.

Here's another shot Legault took of just Atlantis the day before.

I'd say the man's got the chops when it comes to astrophotography, which I couldn't even spell without help. :o

Well if not the chops, certainly the $30,000 Takahashi 5-inch refractor and a $$$$$ camera helped.

I vote chops.

I love Legault's work. He took a stunner of a plane crossing in front of the sun... let me see if I can find it....

Here it is (Astro Pic of the Day back on January 29, 2001)

Amazing. First he had to calculate transit time, then he got 0,6 seconds to get a series of pictures...
Good timing!

Those are outstanding pics. Back when Venus transited the sun, I tried getting pics of it through a monocular (half a binocular) using a cd-rom for a filter. Looked good to my eye. You can guess how the pics turned out. :(