The Solar Orbiter of the European Space Agency observed and recorded on video the movement of Mercury across the solar disk. According to Space. com, the transit of the planet closest to the star occurred on January 3.

The movement of the planet was able to capture several instruments of the apparatus at once, including the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) and Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE). In PHI images, Mercury looks like a dark dot that appears to the right of the star..

[see_also ids\u003d"

The EUI instrument received not a static image, but a video of the movement of Mercury in front of the solar disk. The tiny planet is especially visible after it leaves the disk, when it is framed by ejecta in the solar atmosphere..

The most impressive images were received by the SPICE instrument. This tool is designed to separate sunlight into its component colors.. So he can identify atoms in different layers of a star, as they exist at different temperatures..

“This is not just a look at Mercury passing in front of the Sun, but also passing in front of different layers of the [solar] atmosphere,” said Miho Janvier of the Institute of Space Astrophysics in France..

Previously, the European-Japanese apparatus BepiColombo transmitted to Earth new images of Mercury. The probe took the picture on June 23 during a close approach to the planet to perform a gravitational maneuver.