Curiosity Captures Mercury from Mars

(Before It's News)

The Sun as seen from Mars by Curiosity on June 3, 2014. Mercury is the circled dark spot.

NASA’s Curiosity rover may be busy exploring the rugged and rocky interior of Gale Crater, but it does get a chance to skygaze on occasion. And while looking at the Sun on June 3, 2014 (mission Sol 649) the rover’s Mastcam spotted another member of our Solar System: tiny Mercury, flitting across the Sun’s face.

Silhouetted against the bright disk of the Sun, Mercury barely appears as a hazy blur in the filtered Mastcam images. But it was moving relatively quickly during the transit, passing the darker smudges of two Earth-sized sunspots over the course of several hours.

It’s the first time Mercury has ever been imaged from Mars, and also the first time we’ve observed a planet transiting our Sun from another world besides our own.

Watch an animation of the transit below:
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Read the rest of Curiosity Captures Mercury from Mars (201 words)

© Jason Major for Universe Today, 2014. |
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Post tags: animation, Curiosity, Mars, Mercury, MSL, sun, sunspots, transit

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