Miguel Claro has a dream for how all people under the great golden sun might converge and make the world a happier, more peaceful place—and he caught a picture of that dream on camera. In June, he set off into the wilderness near his home in Portugal and aimed his camera directly into the sun.
“The sun right now, at the moment, is amazing,” Mr. Claro, 46, an astrophotographer, tells The Epoch Times, speaking of what he describes as a period of solar instability that recurs dependably every 11 years.
“Every day it’s different, releasing a lot of different structures and features like prominences, flares, and sunspots, everything is very dynamic on the sun,” he said, adding: “An important part of my work is also dedicated to solar photography.”
But the sun wasn’t enough for the photo he really wanted.
To fulfill his dream, Mr. Claro’s solar portrait required a certain foreground subject matter.
On his recent excursion, Mr. Claro was inspired to capture an interstellar object to stand in for the whole of mankind. His foreground is orbiting the Earth and, on that day, was to form an unbelievably rare conjunction with our closest star for the ultimate photoshoot.
The multination operation of the International Space Station (I.S.S.), for Mr. Claro, means more than just another space endeavor. The I.S.S. is a territory of peaceful cooperation between disparate peoples in a world of riotous disagreement or even destructive war. It is a project that joins people across the world—all represented in one of the most sophisticated pieces of technology the human race has ever created, orbiting 253 miles above the Earth, traveling at a breakneck 17,398 miles per hour.
The I.S.S. is a sprawling, 357-foot-long array—the length of a football field—consisting of solar panels and interlocking, tube-like modules. But viewed from Earth, it’s almost imperceptible; yet occasionally, it can be photographed from Earth if you have the right skill, a powerful enough lens, and the calculations to precisely determine when and where it will pass overhead.
And sometimes, on the rarest of incalculably rare convergences, when cosmic paths and timings all align perfectly, the space station may be photographed overhead while transiting, or crossing in front of, the sun. It’s an astrophotographer’s dream. It was Mr. Claro’s dream.
The sun dwarfs the I.S.S. when they are both seen in the heavens; the I.S.S. is but a speck of dust before the shining round photosphere. Even though the sun is 94.39 million miles from Earth, which makes it appear smaller, its diameter is unfathomably giant, over 863,700 miles. That moment of transiting would be but a blip, literally appearing in the blink of an eye. To capture the I.S.S. darting across its greatness would be a challenge.
Mr. Claro was up for the challenge.
He wanted to demonstrate the sheer scale of these two interstellar objects for a dramatic picture; but more profoundly, he hoped to explore the deeper significance of what the I.S.S. represents:
The I.S.S. is “probably the most advanced structure that we as a human [race] have constructed and put in space and orbiting,” he said, “showing our capacity of when we are doing something as a team and among different countries and everything together without politics.”
Another important point is that the space station will one day be gone, he said, so by photographing it, one will have acquired a piece of rare history.
So much meticulous planning is demanded, as well as the most sophisticated, specialized equipment in such a project—all for just 0.5 seconds when the moment of truth arrives, literally in the blink of an eye, Mr. Claro said. He began several weeks before the day of embarkation, planned for June 2.
Fortunately, he had a head start. Mr. Claro owns and knows how to use the very specialized type of telescope and filter he needs for great solar photography. His telescope has a built-in filter that captures H-alpha (similar to infrared) light, which can pick up, in addition to the I.S.S., many spectacular details of the sun’s surface, or chromosphere, which otherwise would not appear so crisp and clear.
It was also fortunate that math magicians with a penchant for astronomy had troubled it to build a machine to tell people on Earth precisely where and when the I.S.S. will transit the sun and plugged that machine into a website for all to use. Mr. Claro pinned down the time and location where the space station would transit directly over him, to minimize atmospheric interference and its distance from him. He allowed himself two weeks only, so to minimize chances that the I.S.S. would change its trajectory.
Mr. Claro would pack his camera, telescopic lens, laptop, battery, and sophisticated software into his station wagon and drive three hours from his home in Alqueva to an obscure forest to take his photos beneath the baking Portuguese sun.
He had to consider the blistering heat, which could distort the exposure. He watched the weather and planned his field workstation; an umbrella would help keep his laptop cool. His camera, a Player One Astronomy Apollo-M Max, would be another story, as it pointed directly into the sun.
On June 2, the day of embarkation, Mr. Claro set out. It was sunny when he arrived at the appointed spot, which he hadn’t bothered to scout out in advance as he probably should have, except on Google Maps, he said. The weather was fine and his view of the sun was unobstructed.
“It was pretty cool. I think it was almost perfect blue skies,” he said, adding that the temperature was around 30 degrees Celsius. “Everything went well, fortunately.”
His camera was timed for 10 seconds, snapping hundreds of frames per second, to capture the moments before, during, and after the I.S.S. transit of the sun. Once the images were safely on his laptop, he headed home and then sifted through them frame by frame for the golden 200 with the signature mosquito silhouette of the space station traversing the blazing saucer.
He put together this unbelievable composite.
“I think it was very sharp,” he told The Epoch Times, before describing the magnificent details of the chromosphere: filaments, sun spots, and prominences, which are tremendous flares of radiation caused by magnetic distortions on the sun’s surface. “I was very, very happy with the results.”
