Friday, 3 March 2023 – 09:03 WIB
LIVE Techno – On January 3, Solar Orbiter saw the planet Mercury crossing in front of the Sun. The stopover of the small ball with its dark color makes the scale of our solar system very clear.
Mercury, which is about a third the size of Earth, looks very small when compared to the diameter of the Sun, which reaches 865,000 miles. The Solar Orbiter, which spotted the phenomenon, is a joint mission between the Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) that launched in 2020 and aims to take measurements of the Sun with NASA’s Parker Solar Probe.
Solar Orbiter captured the transit in several images. Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), designed to survey the magnetic field of the Sun, capturing planets that appear to be sunspots moving as they speed across the field of view, Extreme Ultraviolet Imager, which captures the intense dynamics of the Sun’s corona, making Mercury appear smaller next to the Sun’s indentation .
The Earth and the Sun as seen from space.
Another tool, the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument on board the orbiter, reveals the transit of Mercury as it appears through different layers of the Sun’s atmosphere, quoting from the Gizmodo website, Friday, March 3, 2023.
“This not only sees Mercury passing in front of the Sun, but also passing in front of different layers of the atmosphere,” said Miho Janvier, a researcher at the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale in an ESA release.
Even though Mercury is the innermost planet that orbits the Sun every 88 Earth days, it has very hot and very cold temperatures. Lacking a substantial atmosphere, the planet closest to the Sun is often hundreds of degrees below freezing. The Solar Orbiter view shows Mercury crossing the face of the Sun at nearly 29 miles per second.
