NASA Releases Images From Mars Of Mercury Passing The Sun
- 10 years ago
NASA has just released images captured by the Mars Curiosity Rover of the planet Mercury passing by the sun. This is the first time that a planet has been observed transiting the sun from any planet besides Earth, and they are also the first images of Mercury that have been taken from the surface of Mars.
NASA has just released images captured by the Mars Curiosity Rover of the planet Mercury passing by the sun.
This is the first time that a planet has been observed transiting the sun from any planet besides Earth, and they are also the first images of Mercury that have been taken from the surface of Mars.
The pictures were captured on June 3rd, 2014 from the Mars Curiosity Rover’s location inside the Gale Crater, using the rover’s two-eyed Mast Camera, or Mastcam.
Mark Lemmon from Texas A&M University, College Station, a member of the Mastcam science team is quoted as saying: "This is a nod to the relevance of planetary transits to the history of astronomy on Earth. Observations of Venus transits were used to measure the size of the solar system, and Mercury transits were used to measure the size of the sun."
The images, released in a video from NASA, were reportedly enhanced to make Mercury appear more visible.
There are also two sun spots approximately the size of Earth that appear in the images, moving at the speed of the sun’s rotation, which is much slower than Mercury’s orbit .
NASA has just released images captured by the Mars Curiosity Rover of the planet Mercury passing by the sun.
This is the first time that a planet has been observed transiting the sun from any planet besides Earth, and they are also the first images of Mercury that have been taken from the surface of Mars.
The pictures were captured on June 3rd, 2014 from the Mars Curiosity Rover’s location inside the Gale Crater, using the rover’s two-eyed Mast Camera, or Mastcam.
Mark Lemmon from Texas A&M University, College Station, a member of the Mastcam science team is quoted as saying: "This is a nod to the relevance of planetary transits to the history of astronomy on Earth. Observations of Venus transits were used to measure the size of the solar system, and Mercury transits were used to measure the size of the sun."
The images, released in a video from NASA, were reportedly enhanced to make Mercury appear more visible.
There are also two sun spots approximately the size of Earth that appear in the images, moving at the speed of the sun’s rotation, which is much slower than Mercury’s orbit .