Posted on 05/03/2016 11:41:56 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: This coming Monday, Mercury will cross the face of the Sun, as seen from Earth. Called a transit, the last time this happened was in 2006. 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 above time-lapse sequence, superimposed on a single frame, was taken from a balcony in Belgium shows the entire transit of 2003 May 7. The 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 2019.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
[Credit and Copyright: Dominique Dierick]
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/post?id=3427247%2C0
No big one.
http://129.164.179.22/apod/image/1605/MercuryTransit_Dierick_1500.jpg
Not sure how they assume the north poles of the earth, sun, and Mercury are to the left of the image. All are slightly “out of plane” with the orbits, and the orbits of earth and Mercury are not quite parallel, but they are near-perpendicular to the solar system’s ecliptic plane.
Uranus, I believe, is the most significantly tilted - which has never really been adequately explained to my satisfaction.
Beautiful image!
It kind of looks like a baseball without the stitching on the left side. Me bad. Sorry.
I do love to look at these astronomical delights, though.
Quite agree... and despite that tilt (Uranus' axis is basically in the plane of the ecliptic), the Uranian moon system is basically unremarkable.
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