Mercury And The Sun
Explanation:
Just days before the peak of the
Leonid meteor shower,
skywatchers were offered another astronomical treat as
planet Mercury crossed the face of the Sun on November 15.
Viewed from planet Earth, a
transit of Mercury is not all that rare.
The last
occurred in 1993 and the next will happen in 2003.
Enjoying a mercurial transit does require an
appropriately filtered telescope,
still the event can be dramatic
as the diminutive
well-done world
drifts past the dominating solar disk.
This slow loading gif
animation is based on images
recorded by the earth-orbiting
TRACE satellite.
The false-color TRACE images were made in ultraviolet light
and tend to show the hot gas just above the Sun's visible surface.
Mercury's disk is silhouetted against the
seething plasma as it follows a trajectory near the edge of the Sun.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
