Miguel Claro has a dream – a dream where all people come together under the golden sunlight, making the world a happier and more peaceful place. And he captured this dream through his camera lens. In June, he set out to the wilderness near his home in Portugal, aiming his camera directly at the sun.
When talking about the 11-year cycle of solar instability, the 46-year-old astrophotographer Claro told Epoch Times, “The sun right now is just amazing.”
“Every day is different, the sun shows many different structures and features such as prominences, flares, and sunspots, everything on the sun is quite dynamic,” he said. “A significant part of my work involves solar photography.”
But just capturing the sunlight was not enough for what he truly wanted in his photos.
To realize his dream, Mr. Claro’s solar photography required a specific foreground subject.
Inspiration struck during one of his recent short trips. He replaced the entire human presence with a celestial object as his foreground subject. Orbiting around Earth, on that day, it formed an incredible rare silhouette with the closest star to us.
For Mr. Claro, the multinational International Space Station (ISS) represents more than just a space endeavor. The ISS is a territory of peaceful cooperation among different nations in a world filled with conflicts and even destructive wars. It’s a project that connects people from all over the world – all represented by one of the most complex technologies in human history, flying at an astonishing speed of 17,398 miles per hour, 253 miles above the Earth.
The ISS is a massive 357-foot-long array, the length of a football field, made up of solar panels and interlocking cylindrical modules. But from Earth’s perspective, it’s nearly unnoticeable. However, occasionally, with the right skills, powerful lens, and precise calculations of when and where it will pass overhead, it can be photographed from Earth.
Sometimes, in the rarest of conjunctions, when the paths and timings of celestial bodies align perfectly, the space station might be captured during a transit in front of the sun. It’s a dream of astrophotographers, and it was Mr. Claro’s dream.
When seen in the sky together, the sun dwarfs the ISS. The ISS is just a tiny speck in front of the brilliant spherical light of the sun. Despite the vast distance of 94.3 million miles between the sun and Earth making it appear small, the sun’s diameter is immense, exceeding 863,700 miles. The transit moment is fleeting, appearing in the blink of an eye. Capturing the ISS zooming across the front of the sun is a challenge.
Mr. Claro was ready to take on this challenge.
“My drive is the challenge,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot in developing my solar capture skills, and I have the right equipment.”
He wanted to showcase the immense scale of these two celestial objects to create a visually impactful image. But more profoundly, he aimed to highlight the deeper meanings represented by the “International Safety Treaty”:
The ISS, he said, “may be the most advanced structure we have built, and operate as humans, in space and in orbit,” showcasing our ability to work as a team, do something between different countries and all things without politics.
He noted another crucial point that the space station will eventually be gone one day, so by photographing it, people will have a rare piece of history.
This kind of project required meticulous planning and the most complex, professional equipment – everything had to be done within 0.5 seconds during the critical moment, almost in the blink of an eye. He started preparing weeks before the transit moment, planning to capture it on June 2.
Luckily, he had a good start. Mr. Claro possesses and knows how to use very professional telescopes and filters to capture excellent solar photography. His telescope has a built-in filter that captures H-alpha (similar to infrared) light, which, besides the ISS, can capture many spectacular details of the solar surface or chromosphere, making these details vivid.
Additionally, a mathematician with a deep interest in astronomy created a machine to accurately inform people of when and where the International Space Station would transit the sun, making this machine available on a website for everyone to use. Mr. Claro determined the exact time and location when the station would pass directly overhead to minimize atmospheric disturbances and the distance between him and the ISS. He allowed himself only two weeks to minimize the possibility of the ISS changing its trajectory.
He packed his camera, telescope, laptop, batteries, and complex software into his travel car, and drove three hours from his home in Alqueva to an inconspicuous forest under the scorching sunshine of Portugal for the photoshoot.
He had to consider the scorching heat, which could distort exposures. So, he had to monitor the weather to set up his outdoor workstation properly. A sunshade umbrella could help keep his laptop cool. His camera, a Player One Astronomy Apollo-M Max, had to be directly exposed to the sunlight as it had to point directly at the sun.
On June 2, the day of the transit, Mr. Claro set out. He said that when he arrived at the designated spot, the sun was shining bright, and he didn’t bother to scout ahead, although he probably should have. With clear skies, he could see the sun in all its glory.
“It was cool. I think it was almost a perfect blue sky,” he said, with a temperature of around 30 degrees Celsius. “Luckily, everything went smoothly.”
His camera timed every 10 seconds, capturing hundreds of frames per second to catch the moments before, during, and after the transit. After securely saving these images on his laptop, he headed home and meticulously sifted through the golden photos, showing the space station passing the fiery star with its iconic silhouette.
He put together this incredible combination.
“I think it’s very clear,” he told Epoch Times, capturing magnificent details of the chromosphere: filaments, sunspots, and prominences caused by the magnetic distortions on the solar surface. “I am very, very pleased with the results.”
The original article titled “Photographer Captures Stunning Photos of International Space Station Transiting Sun—Here’s How” was published on the English version of the Epoch Times website.