Explanation:
On Wednesday, May 13, two, tiny, fast moving spots crossed an
otherwise featureless solar disk.
Not sunspots though, the dark blemishes were silhouettes of
the shuttle orbiter Atlantis and the
Hubble Space Telescope
side by side.
To record this sharp picture of the orbiting pair
against the face of the Sun, astronomer
Thierry Legault carefully set up his camera and telescope near
the center of a 5 kilometer wide path
of visibility
about 100 kilometers south of
Kennedy
Space Center in Florida.
He opened the shutter for 1/8,000 second at 12:17 EDT, catching
Atlantis and Hubble at a range of 600 kilometers while they
were moving at 7
kilometers/second.
The total duration of the
transit (Sun crossing) was 0.8 seconds.
Enlarged in the inset view, Atlantis (top) is approaching Hubble
prior to capturing the space telescope.
Thursday, astronauts began a
series of
spacewalks to perform the maintenance as part of the
final mission
to Hubble.
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