Miguel Claro is an expert photographer, writer and science communicator primarily based in Lisbon, Portugal, who creates spectacular photos of the night time sky. As a European Southern Observatory Photo Ambassador and member of The World At Night and the official astrophotographer of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, he makes a speciality of astronomical “Skyscapes” that join each Earth and the night time sky.
This picture reveals the silhouette of the Worldwide House Station (ISS) because it crosses in entrance of the solar’s disk at a distance of 274 miles (441.5 km) from us and at a velocity of about 4.5 miles per second (7.31km/s).
Seen from Figueira da Foz on northern price of Portugal on June 2, 2024, at 1:18 p.m. native time (1218 GMT), this transit had a complete length of solely 54 seconds. The video reveals a time-lapse of 200 photos captured over the course of round 2 seconds.
The ISS transit throughout the solar was arduous to see even with a particular telescope outfitted with hydrogen filters. I used to be solely in a position seize this uncommon second that occurred within the blink of a watch with a quick video digicam from Participant One Astronomy, the Apollo-M Max, with its shutter set to an excessive velocity body price of 109 photos per second.
The pictures have been processed individually with out being stacked, and I used to be impressed with the standard achieved solely with single frames. The ISS is seen in white on the primary sequence, due to the inversion approach used to course of the pictures of the solar’s chromosphere with extra depth. The second sequence reveals the ISS in black with out this inversion seen.
Its attention-grabbing that it is doable to acknowledge the distinct buildings of the ISS within the picture, together with its photo voltaic panels and modules. The picture additionally reveals in nice element jets of fuel on the solar’s outer ambiance, a big fuel filament and a big lively area (or sunspot), in addition to just a few photo voltaic prominences across the solar’s limb. With a diameter of 865,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers), our solar consists of 73% hydrogen, 25% helium and a pair of% heavier components.
The ISS completes a whole orbit round Earth every 90-93 minutes. The orbital laboratory, house to a world crew of astronauts, spans some 358 ft (109 meters) in width. Whereas pretty massive within the sky with an angular diameter of 62.58″, the ISS appears very small in comparison with the huge dimension of the photo voltaic disc, which has an angular dimension of 31.6′. That makes the solar seem some 30.3 occasions bigger than the ISS in the meanwhile of this picture.
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