飞机、云、月亮、黑子与太阳

2023年10月8日

Plane, Clouds, Moon, Spots, Sun
Image Credit & Copyright: Doyle and Shannon Slifer

Explanation: What’s that in front of the Sun? The closest object is an airplane, visible just below the Sun’s center and caught purely by chance. Next out are numerous clouds in Earth’s atmosphere, creating a series of darkened horizontal streaks. Farther out is Earth’s Moon, seen as the large dark circular bite on the upper right. Just above the airplane and just below the Sun’s surface are sunspots. The main sunspot group captured here, AR 2192, was in 2014 one of the largest ever recorded and had been crackling and bursting with flares since it came around the edge of the Sun a week before. This show of solar silhouettes was unfortunately short-lived. Within a few seconds the plane flew away. Within a few minutes the clouds drifted off. Within a few hours the partial solar eclipse of the Sun by the Moon was over. Fortunately, when it comes to the Sun, even unexpected alignments are surprisingly frequent. Perhaps one will be imaged this Saturday when a new partial solar eclipse will be visible from much of North and South America.

APOD editor to speak: in Houghton, Michigan on Thursday, October 12 at 6 pm

Tomorrow’s picture: strange sunrise eclipse

飞机、云、月亮、黑子与太阳
影像提供与版权: Doyle and Shannon Slifer

说明: 太阳前方的物体是什么？在太阳中心的下方，有最靠近我们、碰巧入镜的飞机。稍远一点的，有地球大气里的众多浮云，它们接续形成一系列的黝黑水平线痕。更后方的，则是造就日盘右上角圆形大缺口的月亮。在飞机上方、太阳表层之下的，则为太阳黑子。影像中最主要的那群黑子是AR 2192；它是2014年记录中的最大者之一，自拍照前的1星期从太阳的边缘现身以来，就不停闪烁和喷发闪焰。这些黝黑的剪影，可惜并不持久。数秒之后，飞机远去；数分钟之后，黑云飘离；而在数小时之后，月亮造成的日偏食也结束了。值得庆幸的是，对太阳来说这些意外的叠合倒是颇为常见。例如在这个星期六的大片北美洲及南美洲地区，可再次见到及拍下另一例全新的日偏食。