Stellar photo shows Space Station, Mercury simultaneously passing the sun
A cosmic coincidence produced an amazing image for a lucky photographer on the ground during a rare celestial alignment earlier this month.
On May 9, Mercury passed in front of the sun, transiting our nearest star for the first time in close to a decade.
At one point as the transit occurred, the International Space Station also passed in front of the sun, allowing photographer Thierry Legault to capture both the orbiting space lab and the small planet in one shot.
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Legault was in Philadelphia when he captured the image, one of the few places where he would have been able to see the transit of both the planet and the station across the sun at the same time.
“Canada had bad weather predicted and around Florida I couldn’t find a suitably quiet but public place, so I went to the suburbs of Philadelphia," Legault said in a statement.
In the photo, you can actually see the station's huge solar panels silhouetted against the sun with far-away Mercury revealed as a much smaller, black dot near the center of the star.
A video featuring the transit and Space Station also shows an airplane passing in front of the sun from Legault's perspective.
The transit of Mercury allowed scientists to take images of the small world backlit by the sun, revealing the planet's thin atmosphere.
Mercury transits the sun from Earth's perspective about 13 times per century, with the last transit happening in 2006 and the next occurring in 2019, according to NASA.
“I was very lucky: 10 minutes after I took the photos, clouds covered the sky,” Legault added.
“Adrenaline flows in the moments before the Station flies by – it is a one-shot chance. I cannot ask the space agencies to turn around so I can try again. Anything can happen.”
The Space Station circles Earth once every 90 minutes and in a dark sky, people on the ground can see the outpost pass overhead depending on the path of its orbit at that time.
If you want to see the Space Station yourself you can use a tracker produced by NASA and embedded below that will help you figure out exactly when and where the station will pass overhead.
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Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
