It may be in its 14th year on Mars but Opportunity still has some surprises to show us—like this, a series of images captured on May 3, 2017 showing the Sun as seen from Mars. But that’s not the special part: see the change in brightness along the Sun’s edge near the end? That was a…
Tag: transit
Solar Photographer Spots Mercury On Its Trip Across the Sun
On May 9, 2016, over the course of seven and a half hours beginning at 7:12 a.m. EDT (11:12 UTC) Mercury passed across the disk of the Sun, appearing to observers on Earth as a small dark dot in front of the massive brilliance of our home star. While the event wasn’t visible to the naked…
Sun, Moon and Spots
The Moon snuck in front of the Sun this morning from the perspective of NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (Little SDO), sliding past the sunspots of active region 1422. For a sense of scale, those sunspots are easily several times larger than Earth! Read the rest of the story here. And check out a video of the…
Sun Pass
Astronomy hobbyist and solar photographer extraordinaire Alan Friedman captured a wonderful image of the International Space Station transiting the edge of the Sun’s disc during a Winter Star Party in Florida on March 1, 2011. Taken with a solar telescope that images the Sun in hydrogen alpha light, the image above clearly shows the ISS…
Sun Crossing
This amazing image was taken by NASA photographer Thierry Legault at 12:17 EST on May 13 as the shuttle Atlantis and Hubble Space Telescope passed in front of the sun, a fleeting transit lasting only .8 seconds. More images of this and the previous day’s transit can be found on Legault’s website. Mission astronauts…
Lights in the Dark 