Hubble Space Telescope Transits across the Sun near Solar Sunspot AR2712

For the best video viewing experience on a large screen in 4K UHD, please see the Youtube 4K UHD Video link at youtu.be/g2LJYiptwR0

 

flickr single image link flic.kr/p/27SmUFk

 

Last week on Friday 1 June and the first official day of Winter here in

Australia, I decided to attempt a Hubble Space Telescope Solar Transit.

 

The Sun has been very quiet lately, but I did notice over the last week or so there was a possibility of capturing Hubble crossing near a small active region (AR2712).

 

Now Hubble is only about the size of a bus and given it was extremely far away, I was wondering how I might fair this time around capturing the transit at 60 frames per second.

 

Given the Sun is so bright, I couldn't see anything and I always dare not look directly into the Sun, so I used a clock and timing to capture the transit.

 

When I arrived home, I was very excited to see the transit path of a very tiny dot (Hubble) which was traveling at high speed across the the Sun's surface and quite close to AR2712!

 

HST Transit Information was Provided by ‘Calsky’ www.calsky.com

 

Hubble in Orbit and Icarus images in the video are courtesy of NASA/ESA

 

Canon EOS-1D X Mark II

Canon 800 mm L IS USM

Orion Solar Filter

 

NASA Hubble Space Telescope 1 June 2018 - 13h19m15.00s

Crosses the disk of the Sun next to Solar Sunspot Region AR2712

Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Satellite at Azimuth=333.2° NNW Altitude 35.6°

Transit duration 1.32s. Visible Path width 12.8 km

Angular Diameter of HST (20580 1990-037-B) 3.31"

Cylindrical Size 13.3m x 4.3m

Distance 870.7 km Angular Velocity 23.9'/s

Ground Speed=7.742 km/s (27,800 km/h)

Done