Uploaded January 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This is a companion video to the one I posted shortly before Mercury transited across the Sun on 11 November 2019 (youtube.com/watch?v=wpz7p7q-974). In that case, Mercury faded as it got closer to the Sun, because its crescent as seen from Earth got thinner. This video shows the few days after the transit, with Mercury getting *brighter* as it heads away from the Sun — think of it like the new Moon, when the crescent is very thin, but growing thicker every day. The observations were made with the Solar And Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) data, and the Sun is blocked by a metal disk (the white circle represents its location and size). The oddly shaped bright star Mercury passes is Zubenelgenubi in Libra, a multiple star, barely resolved by SOHO.
Credit: NASA/ESA/SOHO
This is a companion video to the one I posted shortly before Mercury transited across the Sun on 11 November 2019 (youtube.com/watch?v=wpz7p7q-974). In that case, Mercury faded as it got closer to the Sun, because its crescent as seen from Earth got thinner. This video shows the few days after the transit, with Mercury getting *brighter* as it heads away from the Sun — think of it like the new Moon, when the crescent is very thin, but growing thicker every day. The observations were made with the Solar And Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) data, and the Sun is blocked by a metal disk (the white circle represents its location and size). The oddly shaped bright star Mercury passes is Zubenelgenubi in Libra, a multiple star, barely resolved by SOHO.
Credit: NASA/ESA/SOHO
