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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."

12 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 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.

    2. 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?

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

      Does the same apply to these guys?

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      The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
    4. 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

    5. 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.

    6. 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.

    7. 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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      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
  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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