XRT Picture of the Week (XPOW)

XRT Home XRT Mission Ops YouTube



2016 May 10


Click for movie. Also available on YouTube.


Mercury Steals the Show

Yesterday, we were treated with watching Mercury crawl across the solar disk as observatories all over the world focused on this tiny planet.

In real time, the transit took all day, but when you speed up the XRT movie, you see that Mercury appears to wobble as it moves across the solar disk. This wobble is actually due to Hinode's orbit. This relative motion makes Mercury seem like it's dancing across the disk.


Keywords: Transit, Full Disk
Filters: Al_poly



(Prepared by Keiji Yoshimura & Patricia Jibben)

Back Archive Next