On Monday, a full solar eclipse swept across the US for the first time in almost a century, briefly turning the nation into an excited mob of star gazers.
One of the most striking snaps to come out of the eclipse was an image of the International Space Station’s (ISS) transit across the sun during the breathtaking event.
An amateur astronomer has now released a video of this transit, showing the huge space station – which is the size of an American football field – gliding across the bright orange solar surface.
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This video, taken from a remote reservation in Wyoming, shows the transit of the ISS across the sun during Monday’s solar eclipse over the US (credit: Smarter Every Day)
The video was taken from a reservation in Wyoming, which videographer and scientist Destin Sandlin describes as the ‘perfect spot’ to watch the ISS’s transition due to its positioning relative to the sun.
‘In Kentucky, you get to see the eclipse for an extra 20 seconds,’ he said.
‘Here you get to see the eclipse for almost two and a half minutes, and you get to see the transit of the International Space Station.’
The $100 billion (£80 billion) science and engineering laboratory orbits 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.
It has been permanently staffed by rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts since November 2000.
The ISS transit footage follows the release of another timelapse, this one from Nasa’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera, also known as EPIC, of the moon’s shadow crossing the United States from 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometres) away.
EPIC is stationed on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite.
It typically takes around 20 photos of Earth a day, and Nasa combined the camera’s images from the day of this week’s eclipse to create a stunning timelapse video.
DSCOVR sits at a gravitationally stable area between the sun and Earth called Lagrange Point 1 where the craft ‘parks’ in one spot.
The satellite was launched in 2015 and its images allow researchers to track the weather, cloud movement, and changes to Earth’s forests, oceans and deserts.
DSCOVR’s distant view of the eclipse was one of many taken by Nasa satellites and astronauts this week.
Yesterday, Nasa revealed the view from the international Hinode solar observation satellite, and said it could shed new light on the science behind the sun.
An amateur astronomer has now released a video of the ISS’s transit of the sun during the eclipse, showing the huge space station – which is the size of an American football field – gliding across the bright orange solar surface
The images were taken with Hinode’s X-ray telescope (XRT) as it flew above the Pacific Ocean, off the west coast of the United States, at an altitude of approximately 422 miles (680 km).
Researchers then adapted the still images into a stunning time-lapse video.
According to Nasa, the images could help uncover the mysteries of the sun.
‘Among its many solar research tasks, the satellite’s observation of the eclipse was intended to add new data to ongoing scientific study of the coronal structure in the Sun’s polar region and the mechanism of jets of superheated plasma frequently created there,’ the space agency said.
One of the most striking snaps to come out of this week’s eclipse was an image of the International Space Station’s (ISS) transit across the sun during the event
The International Space Station (file photo) is a $100 billion (£80 billion) science and engineering laboratory that orbits 250 miles (400 km) above Earth
These powerful jets can sometimes erupt 10 million to 12 million miles into space.
Hinode is a joint endeavour by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the European Space Agency, the United Kingdom Space Agency and NASA.
Launched in September 2006, the Hinode mission includes a suite of three science instruments – the Solar Optical Telescope, X-ray Telescope and Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer.
Together, these instruments study the generation, transport, and dissipation of magnetic energy from the photosphere to the corona and will record how energy stored in the sun’s magnetic field is released, either gradually or violently, as the field rises into the sun’s outer atmosphere.
The images were taken with Hinode’s X-ray telescope (XRT) as it flew above the Pacific Ocean, off the west coast of the United States, at an altitude of approximately 422 miles (680 km). Researchers then adapted the still images into a stunning time-lapse video
The stars came out in the middle of the day, zoo animals ran in agitated circles, crickets chirped, birds fell silent and a chilly darkness settled upon the land Monday as the U.S. witnessed its first full-blown, coast-to-coast solar eclipse since World War I.
Millions of Americans gazed in wonder at the cosmic spectacle, with the best seats along the so-called path of totality that raced 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) across the continent from Oregon to South Carolina.
‘It was a very primal experience,’ Julie Vigeland, of Portland, Oregon, said after she was moved to tears by the sight of the sun reduced to a silvery ring of light in Salem.
One of the incredible images from Hinode of the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse, taken approximately 5 minutes farther into lunar transit
The images were taken with Hinode’s X-ray telescope (XRT) as it flew above the Pacific Ocean, off the west coast of the United States, at an altitude of approximately 422 miles (680 km).
It took 90 minutes for the shadow of the moon to travel across the country.
Along that path, the moon blotted out the midday sun for about two wondrous minutes at any one place, eliciting oohs, aahs, whoops and shouts from people gathered in stadiums, parks and backyards.
It was, by all accounts, the most-observed and most-photographed eclipse in history, documented by satellites and high-altitude balloons and watched on Earth through telescopes, cameras and cardboard-frame protective eyeglasses.
Image of the Moon transiting across the Sun, taken by SDO in 171 angstrom extreme ultraviolet light on Aug. 21, 2017.