AMAZING TRANSIT: Yesterday (May 22nd) in Switzerland, Thierry Legault photographed the International Space Station (ISS) and space shuttle Atlantis passing directly in front of the sun. The docked spacecraft were framed by "solar fire" as they raced by new sunspot 1072:

View the full-disk transit

"I have never had such good seeing conditions and this image surpasses any transit image I've done before," says Legault. "The sunspot area is also very sharp." He recorded the split-second transit using a solar-filtered 6" refracting telescope.

NASA's shuttle program is coming to an end later this year, and Atlantis is making her final scheduled visit to the ISS. For this reason, the STS-132 mission patch shows Atlantis heading into the sunset. There is, however, a possibility that Atlantis might fly again. If so, make that sunset a solar transit.

Thierry Legault's picture is absolutely amazing. This is my new favorite space picture.

@dmgerbino

ALIEN BEAUTY: Multiwavelength images of the sun beamed to Earth by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) have a beauty that can only be described as ... alien. We've never seen the sun quite like this before. Consider the following picture taken just hours ago by SDO's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly:

The image is a composite of three extreme ultraviolet wavelengths: 211 Å (false-color red) 193 Å (green) and 171 Å (blue), each tracing a different gas temperature ranging from 1 to more than 2 million degrees K. Highlights of today's sun include an enormous magnetic filament, a coronal hole, and a new sunspot: labels. And that's just for starters. The