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.

Comments

Try this

[Anonymous Coward]

on Wolfram Alpha : "King of England".
Man, that thing is an embarrassment.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

[gibbled]

It was todays astronomy picture of the day!

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Re:Astronomy Picture of the Day

[1u3hr]

"Today" is relative. I saw a different one. Use a fixed date: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090516.html

Re:Astronomy Picture of the Day

[deglr6328]

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

Re:Astronomy Picture of the Day

[Philip K Dickhead]

How about using a lunar calendar? After all, this is the Internet. You know! The place where it is more usual to browse for pictures of missiles, passing in front of a moon!

Re:Astronomy Picture of the Day

[ThinkTwicePostOnce]

The space station qualifies as "incredible"; this photo -- not so much.

The station was less than 1/16th of an inch on my 22 inch monitor where it was
barely distinguishable from a few droplets of dried diet coke shmutz.

Re:Astronomy Picture of the Day

[Anonymous Coward]

It ain't relative as the comment has a date :P

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.

Re:Reminds me...

[Brian Gordon]

..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.

Re:Reminds me...

[davester666]

...my eye's...I can't see anymore...

Re:Reminds me...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why I don't get what's so "incredible" or "awesome" about this picture. It isn't a photograph. It's more of a recreation of the scene using positional data from a photograph. Might as well have rendered or drawn it.

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:Reminds me...

[timster]

Your understanding seems off -- the picture we're discussing is a photograph in every sense. "Trick of perspective" is an odd way to speak of it, since the perspective is simply that as visible from the ground, where the photo was taken.

Re:Reminds me...

[pfft]

From the link: "Thierry made this image using a solar-filtered Takahashi 5-inch refracting telescope and a Canon 5D Mark II digital camera." If that's not a photo, then what is?

Re:Reminds me...

[Anonymous Coward]

..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.

Don't you know that if you stare in the sun you can the Virgin Mary? It's a proven fact. Try it the next time you're outside during the day.

Re:Reminds me...

[Brian Gordon]

I just meant that it's funny how you can see the space shuttle occluding an area of the sun because the sun is so ridiculously enormous.

Re:Reminds me...

[cencithomas]

Wow. I have mod points but without a "-1 flat-out-wrong" option it just doesn't seem worth it.

Re:Reminds me...

[m50d]

The sun and shuttle look like they're about the same distance away (obviously with the shuttle in front), so naively interpreting that photo you'd think the shuttle was a substantial proportion of the size of the sun. That's the trick of perspective.

Re:Reminds me...

[byornski]

I just accidentally my eyes.

Re:Reminds me...

[mobby_6kl]

may I suggest that you try the goggles?

Re:Reminds me...

[spartacus_prime]

But zey do nozing!

Re:Reminds me...

[Hognoxious]

That's so fucking obvious I don't see why you felt the need to mention it, unless you think everyone else is stupid. My hat blocks the sun, but that never made me think the sun is turnip sized.

Re:Reminds me...

[Reziac]

The goggles! They do nothing!!

Re:Reminds me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, turn your understanding back on.

Re:Reminds me...

[Anonymous Coward]

One man's ceiling is another mans floor.

Fly

[mrops]

is that me or is that a housefly on an orange.

Re:Fly

[drew]

That's about what I thought. While I appreciate the difficulty in actually taking the picture, I don't really find it to be very impressive.

Re:Fly

[mkiwi]

It's just you.

It's actually a mosquito on a grapefruit.

Re:Fly

[TinBromide]

That's absolutely ridiculous, if you had eyes at all you'd notice that its really fruit fly on a honeydew.

Re:Fly

[artor3]

It really does help clarify just how big the sun is, in a way numbers can't. That something as big as the space shuttle looks so tiny against the sun, even though it is hundreds of thousands of times closer... it's amazing to actually see.

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:Fly

[jgrahn]

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?

I don't know *why*, but that is indeed what the sun looks like if you watch it heavily filtered in a telescope, or use a telescope to project it on a surface.

Re:Fly

[MichaelSmith]

Maybe an effect of polarisation?

Re:Fly

[427_ci_505]

IANAA, but the sun appears spherical instead of like a big flat bright disc because it is indeed a spherical object - not a big flat bright disc.

Re:Fly

[Anonymous Coward]

is that me or is that a housefly on an orange.

I think it is a housefly. You on an orange would not be a very pretty sight...

Re:Fly

[Cyclopedian]

It's a phenomenon known as Limb Darkening, due to the characteristics of the Sun's photosphere.

Re:Fly

[Anonymous Coward]

you wanna tell us why it *should* look like a flat disk you ignorant fucktard? Like someone said, it looks spherical because it *is* spherical.

Re:Fly

[Maddog Batty]

Sensible question but a non obvious answer.

We see spherical objects as spherical because of the shadows and light reflected from it causing different intensities of light reaching our eyes from it.

The sun is different, it has no shadows or light landing on it. It is the light source. If you assume that the sun is a black body of a constant temperature across its surface, the light reaching us from anywhere on its surface is constant which would make it appear to be a completely flat disc. This effect is due to two cos(theta) terms cancelling each other out if you want to do the maths and would be true no matter what the shape that the sun (or any perfect black body) actually was. If for example, the sun was a cube, we would just see the silhouette of the cube as a flat surface and none of the sides.

Now, in reality, the sun isn't a perfect black body of constant temperature and is both less dense and cooler at the edges than at the centre. This makes the edges darker and makes it look more like a spherical object. The post below on limb darkening gives the details.

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.

Re:Fly

[RackinFrackin]

Grapefruit? screw that!

Re:Fly

[canadian_right]

A sphere has more of its surface pointing directly at you near whatever point you see as the center. As your eye moves towards the edges more and more of the surface is pointing more and more away from your eye, and thus less light is emitted to your eye and it appears less bright. As the sun is SO bright that you cannot look at it, or notice the difference in brightness, without a huge amount of filtering you will only see this effect if you look at a photo, or through a telescope, with a huge filter made specifically for looking at the sun.

This same effect can be seen of any evenly lit spherical light, and even on an evenly lit sphere that is just reflecting light. This is an effect known to virtually any serious artist, much like artists study perspective and shadow casting, to make their art more realistic. You see the same effect on cylinders, they seem brighter in the middle than the edges.

Re:Fly

[hey!]

Ha! I know it can't be a fruit fly on a honeydew, because according to Groucho Marx, "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Re:Fly

[Hognoxious]

Entirely different, the Sun emits light.

Re:Fly

[gyroidben]

This does not apply to the sun since the surface should emit light evenly in all directions, thus it does not matter whether the surface is pointing directly at you or not. The limb darkening explanation above makes much more sense.

fail

[binarylarry]

Uhh, yeah, I don't remember the sun looking so much like it was created in photoshop.

Re:fail

[xSauronx]

thats because god used coreldraw

Re:fail

[timster]

I think you need to spend more time staring at the Sun. Big yellow orb? Check.

Re:fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Going through your comment history, you really are that dumb, aren't you? Keep on shining, you "special" star.

Re:fail

[rvw]

thats because god used coreldraw

God, that runs only on Windows!

Re:fail

[binarylarry]

Why cutie, have I hurt your feelings before?

Transit

[Brian Gordon]

Here's a much more impressive transit.

Re:Transit

[barzok]

That's no moon....

Re:Transit

[Tablizer]

It locks up my FireFox for some reason.

Re:Transit

[4D6963]

Me too, made it crash. That's the annoying thing about OGG being the defacto audio/video format, while it's a great compression, the integration utterly sucks.

Re:Transit

[Brian Gordon]

Yeah if you're in windows. Just kidding mplayer plugin is weird too

Re:Transit

[compro01]

Didn't crash here (Firefox 3.0.10), but the video just got stuck at buffering oscillating between 0 and 1%.

Re:Transit

[Tablizer]

They should offer an MPEG version as an alternative choice. Variety helps.

Re:Transit

[Tubal-Cain]

Also on 3.0.10, but for me it pulled up the download dialogue.

Re:Transit

[stjobe]

Worked fine here, and a really impressive video it is (it's the moon passing in front of the sun).

For the crashers - you might want to check your Java version.

Re:Transit

[David Gerard]

Or get a Firefox 3.5 beta.

Re:Transit

[Anonymous Coward]

I find you lack of original conversation disturbing!

Re:Transit

[Viperlin]

yes, but what of? this is about the shuttle and hubble, not the moon. damn moon-worshipers!

Re:Transit

[kasperd]

Seen from the Earth the size of the Moon and the Sun appear roughly the same. In the clip you link to, the diameter of the Moon appears to be just one sixth of the Sun. Doesn't that mean it would have to have been taken about 2 million kilometers from the Moon? Do we actually have satellites in that high orbit? Or is the effect caused by something else?

Re:Transit

[rbanffy]

Worked flawlessly for me (Ubuntu 9.04 stock on Atom)

Re:Transit

[hey!]

... It's the Eye of Sauron.

Re:Transit

[Deadstick]

Do we actually have satellites in that high orbit?

Yes. The STEREO-B satellite is in a heliocentric orbit (i.e., centered on the Sun, not the Earth) outside the Earth's orbit, gradually getting farther behind it because the period of an orbit increases with distance from the Sun. That picture was taken early in the flight, when the geometry still permitted seeing the Moon and Sun in line; it won't happen any more.

Its partner, STEREO-A, is in an orbit inside the Earth's, and gradually getting ahead for the same reason. As the two diverge, they can image the Sun simultaneously and take 3-D pictures of it.

rj

Re:Transit

[4D6963]

What?! Stop the press, we have someone for whom OGG playback in a browser works flawlessly!!

Re:Transit

[rbanffy]

Before me there were two others who complained about crashes. Shouldn't you bother someone else?

Re:Transit

[againjj]

That's a stellar picture!

Re:Transit

[kasperd]

i.e., centered on the Sun, not the Earth

Thanks. That was the part I didn't get at first. It all makes sense now.

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:small

[erroneus]

My first thought was "oh geez! with all the camera technologies we have these days, that's the best we could get??" I want voyeuristic photos of naked female astronauts with 0-g boobs. Give us some serious zoom!

Re:small

[Shikaku]

You know how boobs sag?

Imagine that sagging upward.

Or outward.

Re:small

[Onyma]

All boobs are perky in 0g.

Re:small

[Maelwryth]

"All boobs are perky in 0g."
Yes. But, some are longer than others. :)

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

Re:small

[D-Cypell]

Or this one... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk

Re:small

[Nezer]

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

I assure you, despite how this photo looks, they are not actually on the Sun.

Re:small

[Bloody Peasant]

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

The image is deceptive; one looks at it and immediately concludes (subconsciously) that the sun is _this_ much bigger than the shuttle. Do the math (Shuttle in orbit ~300 miles above camera; Sun 93000000 miles away) and you realise the sun is a good 300,000 times or so larger than what your eye is telling you.

Crappy quality

[ikirudennis]

While I realize the difficulty of actually taking this picture, am I the only one who thinks this picture is actually really terrible quality? Or am I just used to much better quality from NASA photos?

Re:Crappy quality

[LordKaT]

This was done with a refracting telescope and a digital camera, and it happened in 0.8 seconds.

What, exactly, were you expecting?

Re:Crappy quality

[RpiMatty]

Its not a NASA photo.

http://www.astrophoto.fr/

Thierry Legault is a guy with a telescope and camera.

Your not supposed to look directly at the sun and this guy points a telescope at it. I think its pretty good. Who knew what the sun would look like with a shutter speed of 1/8000 sec.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/05/15/check-this-out-amazing-photo-of-the-sun/

Re:Crappy quality

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a NASA photo. A guy went out with a relatively nice (Canon II 5d) camera and a 5-inch refracting telescope and took this at exactly the right moment. Pretty amazing when you think about it.

Re:Crappy quality

[ikirudennis]

Yes, I've read all this, but my question is: Is this such a fantastic and amazing picture or am I just too accustomed to the high quality of NASA photos?

Re:Crappy quality

[Nyeerrmm]

I don't think I've seen a transit like this that is of much higher quality, unless its taken from another spacecraft, and then you're not likely to get the same effect. The ISS ones I think are a little more impressive because its bigger and there are a lot more details to make out.

Really this is about the best you can do for something like this. This looks to be right at the seeing limit (maybe doing it from a higher altitude could help), and theres plenty of light, so a bigger telescope isn't going to give you anything.

What are you looking for to make it more impressive?

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:Crappy quality

[S-100]

The photo is noteworthy for a number of reasons. Among them:

1) This was done by a guy with a portable telescope and camera that he carts around in the back of his car, not a mountaintop observatory or mega-million satellite.

2) You had to be in exactly the right place at the right time. That is, in a line a few km long for the less-than-one-second that the transit took place.

3) You have to know how to photograph the Sun without frying your equipment or going blind. You need enough magnification to resolve the spacecraft but not so much to miss the target.

4) For a non-professional, this photo took an impressive amount of equipment, configured properly and operated perfectly.

And it's no fake. There's another photo showing the Shuttle and the ISS transiting the Sun and the two are very similar. In that photo, the ISS is the more prominent object.

Re:Crappy quality

[darkpixel2k]

While I realize the difficulty of actually taking this picture, am I the only one who thinks this picture is actually really terrible quality? Or am I just used to much better quality from NASA photos?

They're up there to *fix* the hubble. They haven't actually fixed it yet...

Re:Crappy quality

[timeOday]

am I the only one who thinks this picture is actually really terrible quality?

Sure kid, I got one for ya.

Re:Crappy quality

[Tubal-Cain]

Bear in mind that the photo is being taken...during the daytime...

Definitely should have taken the picture at night.

Re:Crappy quality

[xigxag]

Doesn't matter how much fixin' they do, the Hubble would suck at getting this shot. ;)

Re:Crappy quality

[kohaku]

There's another photo showing the Shuttle and the ISS transiting the Sun and the two are very similar. In that photo, the ISS is the more prominent object.

... and here it is!

Re:Crappy quality

[Anonymous Coward]

That looks so much more like what Hollywood has taught me to expect.

Re:Crappy quality

[Anonymous Coward]

At least you made it obvious that it's fake.

Re:Crappy quality

[damn_registrars]

Sure kid, I got one for ya.

Nice work there. Could also serve as a "how many things are wrong with this picture" shot.

Re:Crappy quality

[NormalVisual]

By the same photographer, no less.

Re:Crappy quality

[Hognoxious]

Well the shadows are all wrong for a start.

Re:Crappy quality

[damn_registrars]

Well the shadows are all wrong for a start.

Did you mean the shadows, or the reflections?

Re:Crappy quality

[Anonymous Coward]

"For a non-professional..."

You haven't looked around his site, have you? He is a professional. As he says "I have made two books: The New Atlas of the Moon with Serge Brunier (Firefly) and Astrophotographie (Eyrolles)."

Re:Crappy quality

[darkpixel2k]

Doesn't matter how much fixin' they do, the Hubble would suck at getting this shot. ;)

I should have known better than to make a slightly funny and slightly technically inaccurate joke on slashdot... ;)

Re:Crappy quality

[Anonymous Coward]

It IS a NASA photo. Thierry made this image (and other images during this mission) under agreement and support of NASA for the STS-125 mission. NASA HQ PHOTO Dept.

Re:Crappy quality

[JeffAMcGee]

But NASA could avoid all those problems by using the Hubble Space Telescope!

Re:Crappy quality

[Anonymous Coward]

that looks shooped. I can tell from the shadows and the pixels.

fake?

[timmarhy]

looks like something someone did in paintbrush. has anyone actually verified this as legit, it wouldn't be the first time the intrawebs fell for a hoax.

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.

Re:fake?

[ThrowAwaySociety]

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.

Well, there you have it then. NASA at work. That's the agency that faked the moon landings, you know.

(Yes, I am kidding.)

Re:fake?

[jamesh]

Of course it's a fake. The sky in the background is black, so obviously it's night, but for the sun to be out the sky would have to be blue. Duh!

(kidding of course. It's a fantastic picture and reminds me of how small we really are compared to the rest of the universe. Kind of like stepping into the Total Perspective Vortex except it doesn't fry your brain.)

Re:fake?

[NormalVisual]

It's a real photo, and it's not terribly difficult to take such photos if you have a good camera, a good telescope (Takahashi is among the best), and most importantly a good equatorial mount for the scope. For solar photos like this, add a good broadband solar filter into the mix.

Lock the scope onto the Sun, set the camera to capture frames as fast as possible, and then throw out everything that comes out crappy. There were two really good frames of the Atlantis shown, but there are no telling how many awful-looking ones were discarded. People do this kind of stuff all the time, but it just doesn't get publicized.

Re:fake?

[1u3hr]

has anyone actually verified this as legit

NASA

Re:fake?

[darkpixel2k]

(Kind of like stepping into the Total Perspective Vortex except it doesn't fry your brain.)

No, it just burns your retinas.

Re:fake?

[MichaelSmith]

looks like something someone did in paintbrush. has anyone actually verified this as legit, it wouldn't be the first time the intrawebs fell for a hoax.

The people who run APOD are better judges of validity than you or I when it comes to astronomy.

Re:fake?

[MichaelSmith]

You would also need to have up to date trajectory data on the shuttle and the ability to turn it into a findable 3D location. Consider the size of the orbiter in that image. If it deviates by 10 or 20 of its own diameters in any direction there will be no shot.

He has to find a spot on a line between the sun and the shuttle. If he goes up a mountain he has to go sideways to be back in the "beam" so to speak. If he sets up near a road he has to avoid being run over. If he sets up in a field he has to avoid being attacked by farm animals, etc.

Re:fake?

[Nyeerrmm]

You don't really need full ephemeris data, you'd just need to know when the transit happened. I'll grant you determining when the transit happens is a more difficult problem, although you can pull the data off of the JPL HORIZONS http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?horizons data.

Get two text files with a list of RA/DEC for the sun and Hubble for the next week, and set up a script to read through them and find the closest approach. If its less than the radius of the sun you have a winner. Given that this guy does this a lot (he's credited for earlier ISS images) he probably has a script set up to download and check the ephemeris for any satellites or other objects of interest a week or two in advance..

At least thats what I'd do... in fact maybe I should buy a solar filter and do just that...

Re:fake?

[rbanffy]

While driving through Florida a couple years ago, on vacation, I got lost. When I stopped by a Seven Eleven and asked where I was, and the guy answered "Melbourne", I promptly returned in the best Australian accent I could fake "I am sure I am still in Florida. It's very unlikely I could get that lost using a car".

The guy pointed my location on a map. 20 minutes later I was back to the hotel.

Re:fake?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lame.

Re:fake?

[HTH NE1]

No, it just burns your retinas.

But mama, that's where the fun is!

Hubble pointed in the wrong direction

[Anonymous Coward]

That Bastard Hubble. I got spotted taking a slash (UK Slang for piss) in my back garden.

The police arrived saying they have me on CCTV and I got fined £80 for a public order offence.

Penn State doesn't think it's too impressive...

[Anonymous Coward]

36.6 out of 100 on the Acquine scale.

http://i39.tinypic.com/zv21si.png

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:Shocking fact

[Onyma]

Very much agreed. That is what is completely amazing to me... when you consciously put the view into perspective the scale becomes awe inspiring.

I never cease to be humbled whenever I catch a glimpse of how insignificant we really are. In turn I am also equally inspired by the idea that one of the smaller things in the universe, namely 'us', is also capable of beginning to comprehend it.

Re:Shocking fact

[4D6963]

Yes, who would have thought that the Sun, the star around which would rotate, would be SOOOOO much bigger than a space vehicle and a space telescope. Next thing you know we'll have pictures showing how tiny people and cars look seen from space compared to the hugeness of Earth.

Re:Shocking fact

[mr exploiter]

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.

Actually we know all the distances so we can calculate how much bigger should the sun look than the shuttle in this picture.

Distance from Sun =1.496 x 10^11 m
distance form hubble=5.59*10^5
size of the sun=4.37*10^9
size of shuttle=5.6*10
Simple math says that the sun should look 291 times bigger, but this assumes that the sun was right on top when the picture was taken and that the shuttle was in horizontal position.

Re:Shocking fact

[pipingguy]

Those aren't people, they're ants. We haven't left the runway yet.

Re:Shocking fact

[rbanffy]

I love those photos of storms in Jupiter that you can measure in how many Earths you could fit in them.

I think most Sun spots you can see from here are larger than the Earth. I remember seeing some that could well be bigger than Jupiter...

I didn't think...

[HeLLFiRe1151]

you could get a picture of passing gas.

Poor photography

[Tomfrh]

I mean come on, he didn't even use a flash...

Re:Poor photography

[bughunter]

Aye - talk about backlit. This has gotta be the worst example ever.

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
     

tried to seer dit

[WoodenTable]

i treid goinf outside and seeing ti. watcjed fpr a wile, couldn't see it. the someone saus it happened back on wedndsday. ugh, missed tht totally ,shoudl hafve RTDA. still hjaving some troubnle with my visonin and typing . a;so havng trouble remembering which kyes are which. lckily iu know whow to post ro slashdot blind.

Re:tried to seer dit

[Brian Gordon]

and they zipped across the sun in only 0.8 seconds."

Hoax

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows the sun-landings were faked.

detail

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it the sun's all evenly yellow, and has pixelation because of being a very short exposure and mega zoomed in- and yet the space shuttle has clearly defined features? I'd have to call a fake if NASA didn't vouch.

Re:detail

[NormalVisual]

The graininess is because the surface of the Sun actually looks like that, not because it's a short exposure.

Re:detail

[Reziac]

And at that resolution it's sure one angry-lookin' star... I'd hate to think of the disposition of, say, a red giant.

Re:detail

[Hognoxious]

Get some glasses, the shuttle is clearly blocky too.

I wondered

[Concerned Onlooker]

That explains it. I wondered what that fleeting shadow was.

Indeed.

[Fantastic Lad]

I thought Solar Wind was invisible.

-FL

yuo fa1l It..

[Anonymous Coward]

Satan's Dick And Perspective, theA Variations on thVe

Mehh

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, the hubble photograph you. Get it?

Scale

[Anonymous Coward]

I love that our sense of scale is still messed up from the photo. The sun looks so damn huge in that picture that it looks like the astronauts would just see this wall of sun if they looked out the window when it would really be no larger then we see it about the size of a large coin.

I could see more clearly

[ignavus]

I could see more clearly what was going on if they just cleaned off those two little black specks in the picture.

It's amazing...

[viyh]

...how beautiful the simplest things can be.

mod) 3own

[Anonymous Coward]

Is 3usy infighting

wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

photographer

Fail.

[cheesecake23]

Every half-competent photographer knows you should use a flash when taking a picture of a backlit subject.

Re:Fail.

[berend botje]

He probably couldn't get the supernova to explode on time to provide decent fill-in light. And then there is the matter that the Canon 5D doesn't have exposure setting for one-trillionth of a second.

Re:Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably they did.

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.

Re:Simple???

[viyh]

Indeed, but I was speaking of the relative simplicity of the photo, i.e. big yellow dot, little black dot.

Re:Simple???

[hcdejong]

a two-thousand ton manned space ship

By the time it reaches Hubble, the Shuttle weighs around 109 metric tons, not 2000.

Re:Simple???

[janwedekind]

Damn. You've got me there.

Re:Simple???

[Anonymous Coward]

The orbiter only weighs about 69 tons when empty, and a little over 100 tons when fully loaded.

either that

[Anonymous Coward]

or passing in front of a lemon. Awesome pic either way.

Limb darkening

[JohnnyDanger]

The edge like that because you see a shallower, thus cooler, portion of the sun's photosphere. As a cooler source of blackbody radiation, it looks darker and more orange. The phenomena is called limb darkening.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limb_darkening

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body

smaller! Re:small

[Anonymous Coward]

Pah, if you want to feel more insignificant, hop on over to images.google.com and look at (in order): "globular cluster", "M31 Andromeda", "M31 Andromeda +halo", and "Hubble Ultra Deep Field" (HUDF).

Bear in mind that when you see a spiral galaxy in HUDF or in the deeper part of the M31 Andromeda halo deep exposure, you are seeing a galaxy about the size of M31, with about a trillion stars about the size of the one in the picture that is already making you feel insignificant relative to the "greater universe".

HUDF, btw, is a rather small fraction of the sky, subtending a solid angle of about 10% the size of the full moon. The sky looks about the same (filled with galaxies) in all directions where we don't have stars and dust clouds in the way. HUDF also only shows what could be picked up during the exposure time; a longer exposure would show still more galaxies at all ranges. Finally, HUDF shows human-visible wavelengths only; there are lots more galaxies visible in longer wavelengths, for a variety of reasons (mainly related to angle, occlusion and the Hubble Flow).

Something to think about the next time a science fiction character or superhero talks about destroying or saving the universe...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

That's no landing...

[MRe_nl]

NASA can upgrade their equipment with a fuel scoop, which allows raw fuel to be skimmed from the surface of stars - a dangerous and difficult activity - and collecting free-floating cargo canisters and escape capsules liberated after the destruction of other ships.

Re:That's no landing...

[daveywest]

But real pilots don't use docking computers.

how did he do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

How did he work out where to go and exactly when to take the picture?

This photo has so little going on in it and yet it is truly amazing, stopped me in my tracks.

Fake?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do we know it's not fake?

I mean, you take a photo of the sun, then photoshop the shadow on?

Anyway of showing with some degree of certainty either way?

Superb

[dugeen]

If this is a genuine picture, it's a triumph, one of the best astronomical photos I've ever seen.