The Best Photo Ever
Oh, the power of the photo. I chug along with my HAWTsHAWT series, but sometimes a picture comes along that just humbles every amateur into putting his/her camera into a box and burying it in concrete. Actually, in this case, I think professionals are humbled, too.
Thierry Legault is a Frenchman who's been imaging the skies for 15 years. Sometimes he steps away from his Parisian home to get shots that fall deeper into space, and he set his eyes on the Space Shuttle Atlantis fixing the Hubble. The backdrop? The sun. I never a photo this... universe-setting... and humbling... and breathtaking. I can't speak. Look for yourself.
Thierry Legault is a Frenchman who's been imaging the skies for 15 years. Sometimes he steps away from his Parisian home to get shots that fall deeper into space, and he set his eyes on the Space Shuttle Atlantis fixing the Hubble. The backdrop? The sun. I never a photo this... universe-setting... and humbling... and breathtaking. I can't speak. Look for yourself.
The dot on the bottom left? That's the freaking Space Shuttle Atlantis about to grapple with Hubble. The doctor is just about to link up with the patient. The pic was taken from Florida at 100 km south
of the Kennedy Space Center on May 13th 2009 12:17. Atlantis is 35 meters long, the Hubble 13 meters (115 ft, 42 feet, respectively). Want to see more detail?
You're probably thinking... what equipment is this guy using? Was he using a ground-based Hubble to take a picture of the Hubble? Not really. It's actually a pretty standard telescope for amateurs, with a Canon 5D Mark II camera hooked up at the end of it. There's a filter on the telescope lens to dim the sun's light. The only other tool was calsky (a celestial observer tool that tells you where in the sky things are going to be when).Boom. That photo came out.
Doesn't that kind of put a perspective on the universe? Is it just us? My lord.
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