Transit de Mercure
Image Credit & Copyright:
Dominique Dierick
Tomorrow -- Monday --
Mercury
will cross the
face of the
Sun, as
seen from Earth.
Called a
transit,
the last time this happened was in
2016.
Because the plane of Mercury's orbit is not exactly coincident with the
plane of Earth's orbit,
Mercury usually appears to pass over or under the Sun.
The featured time-lapse sequence, superimposed on a single frame,
was taken from a balcony in
Belgium shows the entire
transit of 2003 May 7.
That solar crossing
lasted over five hours, so that the above
23 images were taken roughly 15 minutes apart.
The north pole of the
Sun,
the Earth's orbit, and
Mercury's
orbit, although all different, all occur in directions
slightly above the left of the image.
Near the center and on the far right,
sunspots
are visible.
After Monday, the next
transit of Mercury will occur in 2032.