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Double Eclipse Photographed, Sun, Moon, and ISS

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the well-isn't-that-pretty dept.

The Bad Astronomer writes "The exceptionally talented astrophotographer Thierry Legault captured a picture extraordinary even for him: the space station passing in front of the Sun while the Sun was being partially eclipsed by the Moon! He traveled all the way from France to the Sultanate of Oman to take this amazing shot. I have more information about the picture itself on the Bad Astronomy blog, but you should go to Thierry's website to see more amazing pictures he's taken over the years. They're simply jaw-dropping."

21 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Eclipsed .... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Funny

    Looks like the site has been eclipsed already. :(

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    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Eclipsed .... by TheL0ser · · Score: 3, Funny

      It always amuses me to think of servers and networking equipment melting whenever I see a slashdotting.

    2. Re:Eclipsed .... by rehabdoll · · Score: 3, Informative

      I managed to get the page loaded before.

      http://www.rinnestam.se/thierry_eclipse_iss.jpg

    3. Re:Eclipsed .... by b0bby · · Score: 4, Informative

      Try the Coralize plugin for Firefox; it doesn't always work, but there's often a cache. It worked in this case, and the picture is pretty amazing.

    4. Re:Eclipsed .... by MarkvW · · Score: 3, Informative

      The photog only authorized PRIVATE use of the picture. Why don't you respect that and take it off your site?

    5. Re:Eclipsed .... by N1tr0u5 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      People are complaining about the nice fellow that is serving up the image when the site has been slashdotted, but no one is complaining about cache servers serving up the image. Why?

    6. Re:Eclipsed .... by N1tr0u5 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      People are complaining about the nice fellow that is serving up the image when the site has been slashdotted, but no one is complaining about cache servers serving up the image. Why? Aren't they just as guilty of unauthorized reproduction as he is?

    7. Re:Eclipsed .... by e4g4 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Does the same apply to these guys?

      --
      The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
    8. Re:Eclipsed .... by choongiri · · Score: 4, Informative

      Here are copies that don't contravene the photographer's usage request:

      http://astrosurf.com.nyud.net/legault/eclipse110104_solar_transit.html

      http://legault.perso.sfr.fr.nyud.net/eclipse110104_solar_transit.html

    9. Re:Eclipsed .... by N1tr0u5 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So as long as I automate the replication of content on the web (eg, make the server do it instead of manually doing it), it is legal? That sounds like a fallacious argument.

      I agree, I appreciate that I am able to see it via his website. I'm just confused as to why the line is drawn.

    10. Re:Eclipsed .... by snookerdoodle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The photog only authorized PRIVATE use of the picture. Why don't you respect that and take it off your site?

      Gee, thanks for getting him to take down a mirror of a slashdotted image. I actually wanted to see the thing.

      Moron.

    11. Re:Eclipsed .... by ArundelCastle · · Score: 4, Informative

      Thierry's notice says "use". "Distribution" is neither literally or legally considered synonymous with use (in north america). And yes I am a photographer, I'm sure Thierry knows the difference too. He's famous enough to know that these things spread.
      The only thing the parent did improper is rename the image from eclipse110104_solar_transit_33.jpg to thierry_eclipse_iss.jpg, which disrupts Thierry's ability to track its propagation, even though it is nice enough to include his name as an inherent keyword.

      For the server argument, astrosurf.com/robots.txt doesn't disallow bots from crawling images. Many commercial photographer sites do.
      A bot can indeed be guilty of ignoring those rules, but that just means it was programmed without concern for rules.

    12. Re:Eclipsed .... by Jesus_666 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You could make the point that copyrights as practiced today are unethical. Effectively-endless copyrights mean that society never gets to freely use any literary or artistic work even though many of these copyrighted works freely use earlier, unprotected works. They also stack the market in favor of big corporations who can afford to license anything they want to use (and swallow any lawsuits from rights owners who don't want to give them a license). Even if copyrights are never extended again, durations close to a century are effectively eternal in some sectors like IT.

      Copyrights aren't bad per se but the current implementation is most likely suboptimal for society and can be argued to be unethical on those grounds.

      --
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  2. Re:That's no moon by ArcherB · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...it's a space station.

    So apropos for once.

    Actually it is a moon AND a space station.

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  3. Photoshopped by michelcolman · · Score: 4, Funny

    The shadows are all wrong.

  4. Re:Amazing! by bryansj · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the link: Image of the solar transit of the International Space Station (ISS), taken from the area of Muscat in the Sultanate of Oman on January 4th 2011 at 9:09 UT, during the partial solar eclipse. Takahashi FSQ-106ED refractor on EM-10 mount, Canon 5D mark II. 1/5000s exposure at 100 iso. Transit forecast calculated by www.calsky.com (many thanks to Arnold Barmettler for his help). Transit duration: 0.86s. ISS distance to observer: 510 km. Speed in orbit: 7.8km/s (28000 km/h or 17000 mph). The image shows three planes in space: the Sun at 150 million km, the Moon at about 400000 km and the ISS at 500 km.

  5. OMG it's a double ecplise all the way! by RevWaldo · · Score: 4, Funny

    What does this mean!?

    .

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    Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
    1. Re:OMG it's a double ecplise all the way! by dkleinsc · · Score: 3, Funny

      No, that's actually a misprint. It's actually The Great Conjugation, an event in which all possible verb forms in all known languages are spelled out and used correctly in a sentence.

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  6. Alan Shepard whacking golf balls by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 3, Informative

    Some folks from the former East Germany sometimes ask me if the Apollo Moon landings were faked. Some admitted that they were taught so in school. Wrong shadows, flapping flag, etc.

    I reply that I got up at 04:00 EST when Apollo 14 was on the Moon, and Alan Shepard knocked around some golf balls. Walter Cronkite looked liked he was grabbed out of the grave, and did not seemed amused that CBS dragged him out of bed to report on the Moon walk.

    Golf balls on the Moon? Not even the wackiest Hollywood director could think that thing up.

    Of course, the definitive evidence for the Moon landings is a mirror they left behind, which is used to shoot lasers at to determine the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

    Of course, one could argue that a Moon chick dropped her compact powder kit . . .

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    1. Re:Alan Shepard whacking golf balls by Jason+Levine · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Technically speaking, the mirror could have been left by an unmanned probe. Of course, all the rest of the evidence points so overwhelmingly towards the Moon landing being fact and not fantasy. (The Mythbusters did an expert job at busting the various "proofs" that conspiracy theorists give.) I'd say that the biggest knock against the conspiracy is that it would have required thousands of scientists, politicians, engineers and various government officials to keep the secret for over 40 years now. Plus the others that would have been involved in the subsequent Moon landings. (We did go more than once.) When have you known that many people to keep a secret that big for that long a time?

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  7. Re:Not from video by wvmarle · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There isn't any difference between "video" and "lots of stills taken in short succession".

    It's known exactly when the ISS is passing the Sun, so for making such a shot I'd start a short time before that moment and end shortly after, taking a shot every 0.2 seconds (or however fast your camera can manage - this are pretty high resolution images), and you have a couple dozen shots at least one of which should include the moment.