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Atlantis and ISS Transit the Sun - courtesy Thierry Legault, www.astrophoto.fr

Spaceships in the Sun

Direct from the "pick your jaw up off the floor" image department: Thierry Legault’s amazing image of space shuttle Atlantis preparing to dock with the International Space Station (ISS), captured while they transited the Sun!:


Image posted with permission of Thierry Legault, www.astrophoto.fr

Such amazing shots don’t just happen – Legault had to calculate where on Earth the transit would be visible from (he took this shot from near Madrid, in Spain), as well as the exact time. The maximum amount of time he had to take the shot (if placed perfectly), was only a half a second (the time for the space vehicles to transit the Sun).

For more information, and a stunning high-resolution version, click here.

Editor
      1. Confusing
        Oil platforms are ships? that makes things a bit confusing. So the basic premise of a ship is that it allows the permanent or temporary support of human life in a hostile environment?

        Are satellites considered ships too? or does a ship always need to harbor a human crew?.

        or is it just because any man-made object on the sea is a ship, and we extrapolate the same attributes to a bigger sea —space?

        To me, a ship is about a journey; to travel to point A to point B. Granted, the ISS is in perpetual motion, but at a fixed orbit.

        I remember that proposal of a few years back, of retrofitting the ISS once is out of commission, to turn it into a REAL spaceship —with an actual destination.

        1. not sitting
          I think the basic factor is that a ship is not sitting on the ground. Many oil platforms float. So that would make airplanes ships, which is sort of reasonable. I don’t know about balloons.

          Certainly a space station is not stationary, the orbit isn’t really all that fixed. It gets towed around a fair bit but Shuttle and Soyuz.

          1. Floating and fixed
            Oh. so floating is the key. Hmm, kinda makes sense, though it takes some of the romanticism of calling something a ship. a ship that goes nowhere is… sad.

            Yeah, the orbit of the ISS is always decaying. Not a very buoyant ship IMO 🙂

    1. Scales of Space
      [quote=red pill junkie]Should we consider the ISS a spaceship?

      PS: yeah I know I’m stepping on your beautiful title fit for that beautiful image :-P[/quote]

      Yeah, fair point – it’s just a nice title. Although, having said that, (a) the ISS is built to inhabit space, (b) it has thrusters which can make it move, and (c) if it escaped Earth orbit, it would thus automatically be a spaceship. And (d) it’s currently moving at around 8km/sec, in space. 🙂

      Another interesting point I was thinking about while looking at that image. We look at it and in our puny human minds sort of assume the ISS and Shuttle are up there in space much nearer the Sun than us. And yet, relatively speaking, they are nowhere near it. Making the Earth the size of a school globe 12 inches (1 foot) in diameter, the ISS ‘skims’ barely a third of an inch above the surface of the globe (on average, around 350km up). In comparison, the Sun would be almost 4km away (150,000,000km away).

      None of that takes away from an absolutely stunning (and technically brilliant) image though.

      1. closer than you
        Put another way, several times a day the ISS is closer to each of us than the rest of the TDG regulars are. Less than 500 kilometers. If you could drive and started early, you could be there for lunch.

        1. Up it
          [quote=earthling]Put another way, several times a day the ISS is closer to each of us than the rest of the TDG regulars are. Less than 500 kilometers. If you could drive and started early, you could be there for lunch.[/quote]

          Just put it in ‘V’ for vertical? 😉

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