On May 9, the solar system's innermost planet migrated across the bright disk of the sun. Amateur astronomers and professional observatories alike captured images and videos of this rare event. But one view of Mercury's pilgrimage accomplished something unprecedented: the highest-ever spatial-resolution images of a Mercury transit. The images are featured in this awesome video, which begins with footage taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). It then fades into the high-res images, which show the tiny, black disk of Mercury against the bright solar background. The high-res images were taken by the New Solar Telescope (NST) at the Big Bear Solar Observatory outside Los Angeles. The 1.6-meter-diameter (5.25 feet) NST is "the highest-resolution solar telescope in the world, so its images are the sharpest," Bin Chen, an assistant professor of physics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, told Space.com in an email.
- See more at: http://www.space.com/32879-sharpest-ever-mercury-transit-view-video.html#sthash.3VfQQEPw.dpuf
- See more at: http://www.space.com/32879-sharpest-ever-mercury-transit-view-video.html#sthash.3VfQQEPw.dpuf