Space and astronomy news
Solar Orbiter’s unique vantage point recently allowed researchers to make a crucial observation of the solar system’s innermost world.
You never know when a chance for some extra space science will present itself. Recently, European Space Agency (ESA) mission controllers had just such a chance, when the planet Mercury passed in front of our host star as seen from the Solar Orbiter’s point of view in space.
Continue reading “ESA’s Solar Orbiter Spies a Transit of Mercury”
Lead image credit: Brendan Martin.
(Note: Awesome images are being added as they come in!)
Update: Here’s two more amazing videos of yesterday’s transit of Mercury that have come our way. First: double solar transits featuring Mercury, the International Space Station and a low flying plane right here in the skies of good old planet Earth courtesy of (who else?) Thierry Legault:
And here’s one of the very few sequences we’ve seen of the transit with foreground, captured at sunset by Gadi Eidelheit based in Israel:
And finally, check out this amazing (and mesmerizing) animation of Mercury racing across the Sun, courtesy of the Big Bear Solar Observatory!
It’s not every day you get to see a planet pass in front of the Sun.
But today, skywatchers worldwide got to see just that, as diminutive Mercury passed in front of the disk of the Sun as seen from the Earth. This was the first transit of Mercury across the face of the Sun since November 8th, 2006, and the last one until November 11th, 2019. Continue reading “Images of Today’s Transit of Mercury From Around the World”