From his vantage point from Southern France, ace astrophotographer Thierry Legault trained his Takahashi TOA-150 refracting telescope at the sun and, at precisely the right moment, captured the Chinese Tiangong-1 prototype space station (plus docked Shenzhou-10 module) as it transited the solar disk on June 16. <\/p>\n
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The transit took less than half a second to complete as the Chinese outpost raced across the sky at an orbital velocity of 16,500 miles per hour. The station is at an altitude of around 230 miles. <\/p>\n
The photograph above shows the \"Star Wars\" Tie Fighter-like silhouette of the solar paneled Tiangong-1 and Shenzhou-10, home to 3 Chinese astronauts Nie Haisheng, Zhang Xiaoguang and Wang Yaping. Through a white light filter, Legault also captured the fine detail of sunspots plus granulation in the sun's photosphere. <\/p>\n
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In a second image taken on the following day (June 17), Legault used a hydrogen-alpha filter and snapped a series of images through the entire second transit of the space station. For this attempt he had a high-speed camera attached to the telescope, grabbing images at 38 frames per second. <\/p>\n
Both images are a testament to Legault's astrophotgraphy skills, more of which can be seen on his website Astrophoto.fr. <\/p>\n
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Stunning Solar Transits by China's Space Station<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From his vantage point from Southern France, ace astrophotographer Thierry Legault trained his Takahashi TOA-150 refracting telescope at the sun and, at precisely the right moment, captured the Chinese Tiangong-1 prototype space station (plus docked Shenzhou-10 module) as it transited the solar disk on June 16. Continue reading