Mercury Transit from TRACE (1600 Angstrom ultraviolet)
Visualizations by
Dawn C. Myers
Released on November 8, 2006
This is a view of the planet Mercury (a black dot) as seen by TRACE through the 1600 angstrom ultraviolet filter. Because the TRACE field-of-view is much smaller than the solar disk, the spacecraft is repointed three times during the transit (creating the position jumps of the movie).
This movie was generated from telemetry which has undergone a minimum of processing (to deliver quickly for the media) so data dropouts and other quick-processing artifacts may be visible. Special thanks to Dawn Myers of the TRACE project for this effort.
The TRACE satellite views the Sun at ultraviolet wavelengths with high temporal (approximately 1-12 seconds) and spatial (1 arcsecond per pixel) resolution. Launched on April 2, 1998, it orbits the Earth in a Sun-synchronous orbit.
GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation:
Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0