Alright, it’s a little easier when someone puts a tiny circle around it. What you are seeing is China’s Tiangong-1 space station transiting the Sun. This is the handiwork of Astrophotographer Thierry Legault who had to time this perfectly to snap this picture since since the station zoomed through this shot in only .09 seconds.

Notice how the massive sun spot completely dwarves the Tiangong-1 meager size which is only 10.3 x 3.3 meters.

Check out the close up shots at the link below.

[Universe Today] via Bri G

A newly identified comet is coming home for the holidays. And by holidays I mean mid-December and by home I mean the Sun. So really that first sentence doesn’t mean anything. But a comet is going to graze the surface of the Sun, most likely disintegrating it.

The comet is categorized by astronomers as a “sungrazer” and it is destined to do just that; literally graze the surface of the sun (called the photosphere) and pass through the sun’s intensely hot corona, where temperatures have been measured at upwards of 3.6-million degrees Fahrenheit (2-million degrees Celsius).

We should get some pretty wicked images from the daredevil space racer’s death defying stunt. In the slim event that the comet survives, we might even be able to see it in broad daylight.

[Live Science]

[Space]

Okay, it’s really the most detailed picture of a sun spot ever taken. Still…

[Pop Sci]