Last Tuesday was witness to a truly historic event, the Venus transit of the sun. But one photographer topped even that!
Astrophotographer Thierry Legault was caprturing images of the event when he managed to get NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in the frame as well!
Yahoo News explains: Venus crossed the sun’s face from Earth’s perspective on Tuesday (June 5), marking the last such Venus transit until December 2117. Astrophotographer Thierry Legault captured the rare event (above), and his shot shows Hubble accompanying the planet on its trek across the solar disk.
Legault (below) traveled to Australia to observe Venus’ nearly seven-hour transit. But he had to act fast to catch the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope as it zipped across the sun’s face in less than a second.
“I was in northeast Australia for the full transit of Venus and a transit of Hubble in the middle,” Legault told the website SpaceWeather.com. “My Nikon D4 digital camera was working at 10 fps on a Takahashi FSQ-106ED telescope to record nine images of HST during its 0.9s transit.”
Hubble is visible in Legault’s photo as a tiny black speck, while Venus appears as a much larger black disk slightly below the venerable telescope. A smattering of dark sunspots is also visible in the image.

















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