SOLAR TRANSIT OF ISS AND ATLANTIS

These images are under copyright (Thierry Legault/Eurelios). According to laws about image property, a link to this page is allowed but any public use (web site, television, magazine etc.) of one of these images is possible only after explicit consent of the author. Any violation will be subject to prosecution.

Image of the solar transit of the International Space Station (ISS) and Space Shuttle Atlantis (50 minutes after undocking from the ISS, before return to Earth), taken from the area of Mamers (Normandie, France) on september 17th 2006 at 13h 38min 50s UT.
Takahashi TOA-150 refractor (diameter 150mm, final focal 2300mm), Baader helioscope and Canon 5D. Exposure of 1/8000s at 50 ISO, extracted from a series of 14 images (3 images/s) started 2s before the predicted time.

Transit forecast (place, time...) calculated by www.calsky.com.
Transit duration: 0,6s. Transit band width on Earth: 7.4 km.
ISS distance to observer: 550 km. Speed: 7.4km/s. ISS size: 73m. Distance between ISS and Atlantis: 200m.

(click on the image below for the 100 % version)

The red dot is the location I chose on transit line, 120km from home, after careful study of weather satellite images and forecasts.
(Copyright: NERC Satellite Receiving Station, Dundee University, Scotland, http://www.sat.dundee.ac.uk/; many thanks to Andrew Brooks) 

 

The image has been published in various newspapers and magazines (France, England, USA...)
and has been presented on CNN by Femi Oke in introduction to her weather bulletin on Oct 6th (thank you Femi!):

 

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