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Nasa: Pictures of the ISS transiting the sun

ISS captured against the SunImage source, NASA/Joel Kowsky

Nasa have released an image of the International Space Station (ISS) crossing the sun.

The rare image shows the ISS transiting the sun - transiting is when one object crosses in front of another in space.

Nasa captured the ISS as a silhouette at different points and merged the images together. The ISS looks like a really small object compared to the huge sun.

At the time the photo was taken astronauts were out on a spacewalk.

Image source, NASA/Joel Kowsky
Image caption,

Look closely - can you spot the ISS?

The ISS was captured as it moved from right to left across the sun while orbiting 400km above Earth.

The transit lasted about 0.54 seconds. The ISS travels at about five miles per second.

The image was taken from near Virginia, United States.

Media caption,

20 years of the ISS (2018): What is the International Space Station?

When the picture was taken astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Thomas Pesquet were working outside the space station on a spacewalk that took six hours and 45 minutes.

They were installing a new solar array to increase the station's power supply.

Also onboard the station are Nasa astronauts Megan McArthur, Mark Vande Hei, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Oleg Novitskiy.