HETANEWS.com – The spacecraft, Solar Orbiter, operated by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) managed to capture the rare event where the planet Mercury was caught on camera sliding across the sun’s disk.
The Solar Orbiter is the satellite currently closest to the Sun. Led by ESA, on January 3, 2023 the Solar Orbiter made observations and managed to record the seconds Mercury passed through the center of the solar system.
In the circulating video, the planet looks like a black dot against a background of burning flames.
Events like these are called transits, and they occur when a smaller object, such as a planet or moon, passes in front of a giant star, blocking some of its light. Transit events can teach scientists many interesting things.
When an exoplanet or even a planet in our solar system like Mercury passes in front of its parent star (the Sun), some of the starlight will affect the atmosphere on that planet – in this case Mercury.
Analysis of these differences in light allowed scientists to determine the composition of the gases present on Mercury. Scientists have also used this event to study the atmosphere of Venus and the atmospheres of some exoplanets. The atmosphere of Mercury has previously been studied using transit data.
But Solar Orbiter takes advantage of transit events for something different: calibrating its instrumentation to get more accurate data.
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and one of the least studied in the Solar System. Many mysteries remain unsolved, including how or where it formed, whether it has internal geological activity, or why it has a global magnetic field while Venus and Mars do not.
Transit data will not provide answers to the questions above. There is a separate mission currently being carried out by astronomers to further investigate this uninhabitable planet. To be sure, there are still many surprises that will emerge from Mercury as time goes by.
