Petr Horálek’s rare celestial photograph selected by NASA

Czech astronomer and physicist Petr Horálek has had his photograph selected as NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. The image captures a rare triple alignment featuring the International Space Station (ISS) and an L-39 Skyfox training jet crossing the face of the Sun.

The ISS transit lasted approximately 0.66 seconds. Horálek, who captured the shot near the village of Prasek in the Hradec Králové region on June 8, estimated the mathematical probability of capturing both the station and the aircraft against the solar disk simultaneously to be less than one in 30 million.

Horálek, associated with the Institute of Physics in Opava, has been featured in NASA’s prestigious selection more than 50 times since 2014.