Stunning Video Shows Mercury Passing the Sun

A satellite launched in 2020 to observe and study the 4.6 billion year old solar system. Sun sat in the front row as the planet Mercury moved around the giant star, and the entire episode was captured on images.

Recently, the European Space Agency published video and other observations of the January 3rd transit when Mercury appeared as a black circle on the Sun’s face.

Although the meeting looked close, it was not at all… NASA says the first planet in our solar system is on average about 36 million miles away from the giant star.

A perception that is not lost in stunning imagery is the difference in size between the two celestial bodies. Mercury is the smallest planet in the solar system, and the space agency estimates it would take more than 21 million copies of the planet to fit inside the sun.

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“This is not just a look at Mercury passing in front of the Sun, but also passing in front of different layers of the atmosphere,” Miho Janvier, a physicist at the Institute of Spatial Astrophysics in France, said in a statement.

The ESA said planetary transits are beneficial to astronomers because they give them time to more accurately calculate an object’s orbit and size, and to recalibrate instruments on the orbiter.

Solar Orbiter is an international joint mission between ESA and NASA that studies the influence of the sun on the solar system.

NASA said The satellite orbits the Sun approximately every 168 days and has made many historic innovations, including taking pictures of the Sun’s north and south poles.

The US space agency said the orbiter is at least 26 million miles from the Sun and can withstand temperatures up to 970 degrees thanks in part to a large thermal shield that protects much of the equipment.

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“If Solar Orbiter’s radiators were illuminated by sunlight as they approached the Sun, their overall efficiency would be compromised,” says Claudio Damasio, thermal engineer at ESA. previously explained. “The entire spacecraft has been designed with this in mind – in the worst case, Solar Orbiter can get out of control by no more than eight degrees for a maximum of 50 seconds. Thus, any reboot from safe mode is calculated for this time. period allowing the spacecraft to reorient itself and save the mission.”

The orbiter is expected to be operational until at least 2027 and will have much more capability to capture stunning images of planetary flybys.

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