Tuesday, September 22, 2026
Newsletter About
Tech & Science

APOD: 2026 September 22 – Chance Triple Alignment: Plane, Space Station, Sun

APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 September 22 –… Today’s APOD Archive Submissions Index Search Calendar RSS Education About Discuss   APOD Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe…

This article was originally published by NASA Breaking News and is republished here under license.

APOD

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

An image of the Sun is shown with several dark  silhouettes superposed. On the upper right is an airplane, on the right is the International Space Station, and across the Sun are several sunspots.

Chance Triple Alignment: Plane, Space Station, Sun

Explanation: This shot captured an unexpected silhouette.   Which is it? It isn’t the sunspots, the small dark regions caused by concentrated magnetic fields visible around the Sun’s bright disk.   Sunspots typically last for weeks and were expected, since these spots were seen previously. It isn’t the International Space Station (ISS), the small dark structure on the middle left.  This is because the featured picture was planned with sub-second timing to record the iconic structure passing before the Sun. It is the airplane. Just as this exposure was taking place in June, from Prasek in the Czech Republic, an airplane began its own miniature partial eclipse. The result is this triply aligned image of our Sun. The photographer estimates that the chance of any random Sun image containing silhouettes of both a space station and an airplane, from that location, is about 30 million to one. 

APOD’s main NASA site is moving: From apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod
Tomorrow’s picture: open space

Date September 22, 2026
Credit & Copyright Petr Horalek / Inst. Physics Opava
Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff, Jerry Bonnell, Cecilia Chirenti, Keighley Rockcliffe
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U.

More in Tech & Science

View All →

Leave a Reply

Discover more from The Meridian Review

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading