Absolutely Amazing: ISS, Discovery Transit Sun Near Active Sunspot Region

By Nancy Atkinson - March 09, 2011 11:15 AM UTC | Solar Astronomy

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Amateur astronomer Catalin Fus from Poland has captured one of the most amazing images I've ever seen – and his timing was impeccable. On March 7th at 13:05:49 UTC, just after space shuttle Discovery had undocked from the International Space Station, the two ships flew in formation directly in front of the Sun, as seen from Fus' location just outside of Krakow. With his solar-filtered telescope focused on active sunspot region 1166, he found there were a couple extra spots in his image – Discovery and the ISS. Given that this was Discovery's final mission in space and final visit to the ISS, this image has historical significance, as well as just being absolutely fantastic. Keep in mind that transits like this last

just over a half a second.

He used the following equipment:

Telescope : 102mm f6.3 GPU oilspaced apochromat self-made Herschel Prism + Meade TeleXtender 2x 1.25'' Mount: Losmandy G11 Camera: Canon EOS 550D 1frame @ ISO 100, 1/1000s With just a touch of post processing done in PixInsight and PS CS5

[caption id="attachment_83934" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="Cropped version of the ISS/Discovery/sunspont conjunction. Credit: Catalin Fus. Used by permission."]

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You can see more Fus' handiwork at his website,

www.catalinfus.ro

. Our thanks to Catalin for allowing Universe Today to post his incredible image.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com