An image of the International Space Station (ISS), and a bird, flying in front of the sun!

Every month or so the ISS passes between us and the sun on very specific trajectories. The weather must be great and the corresponding location on earth must be close enough to travel to see it. One corner of a park in Draper, Utah was just the right spot in the summer of 2021.

After hours of imaging, I was able to capture a mosaic of the sun, as well as a bird (random) and the space station (planned) passing by. The ISS passed across this image in just one second! A lot of planning for such a quick shot.

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft was attached to the ISS at the time, which looks like a handful of black pixels if you zoom in.

The bird is flying right over a couple of sunspots, cooler/darker regions of strong magnet field activity at the surface of the sun.

Telescope: ES ED102mm FCD100
Mount: iOptron CEM40
Camera: ZWO ASI174MM
Filter: Daystar Quark Chromosphere (H-alpha)