This stunning image shows a plane passing in front of the sun, with a huge sunspot visible of the face of our star. Astrophotographer Michael Sanders captured the image from Bangkok, Thailand.
"I had just set up my telescope, focused it, then snapped off a couple of photos in quick succession while waiting for the clouds to pass, and a plane goes past," Sanders wrote.
The image shows the sunspot group AR 2192. Sunspots are active areas on the sun that generally form when magnetic field lines are warped and twisted. Solar storms such as flares and coronal mass ejections erupt from sunspots, which look dark because they are cooler than the areas surrounding them.
Sanders used a Takahashi FSQ-85 with 1.5x adapter plus Nikon TC2 converter with Nikon D800 and Baader AstroSolar filter. ISO-200 @ 1/1000 sec.
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