Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, has graced the interwebs with his top ten astronomy pictures of 2006. They are phenomenal, as is to be expected from this eye-popping science, and Phil's descriptions, if anything, are just as spectacular.
My particular favourite sits at number five in the list - a shot from the earth's surface of the ISS and the Space Shuttle Atlantis passing in front of the sun. The photographer's site explains more, but also makes it abundantly clear I shouldn't post the image here.
Snippet of choice: The shot was taken at a shutter speed of 1/8000th of a second, at 50 ISO. My own Olympus E300 DSLR claims to be capable of 1/4000th, and doesn't even have 50 ISO as an option, and of course I don't have a 150mm telescope to use as a lens... but we can dream.
posted @ Monday, January 8, 2007 1:21 PM