Mertcury and the Eclipse

[oriel36]

At the same time as the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, the planet Mercury will overtake the Earth with the central Sun as a backdrop.

https://www.theplanetstoday.com/

Scroll the date forward to gain the perspective.
A satellite travelling with the Earth around the Sun, creating permanent solar eclipse conditions, will capture the transition of Mercury from an evening appearance to a morning appearance or from left to right of the Sun.

https://sol24.net/data/html/SOHO/C3/96H/VIDEO/

We usually see everything close to the left of the Sun as an evening appearance and close to the right of the Sun as a morning appearance.

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14563

During a total solar eclipse, that view is suspended, and observers see the positions of the planets relative to the central Sun. Currently, Venus appears at dawn, while Jupiter appears at evening. Over the coming months, they will switch places: Venus because its motion is faster than the Earth's, and Jupiter because its motion is slower.


Mercury has just entered the range of the satellite's camera as it transitions from left to right and will soon appear at dawn. It can be spotted among the change in the position of the stars from left to right (heliacal rising) as its motion is faster than the Earth's, which causes the apparent change in the position of the stars.

After over a decade drawing attention to observations using the satellite, some observers must feel their lack of effort, after all, who will notice tomorrow that the eclipse event is made even more special by the motion of Mercury as it runs smaller and faster circuits seen from a satellite imitating the Earth's orbital motion.

[Jake M]

Irrelevant. Stop making postings here as promised on 2/20/24.

[John Savard]

Post by oriel36
A satellite travelling with the Earth around the Sun, creating permanent solar eclipse conditions,

When I read that, I pictured a satellite at the L1 point of the
Sun-Earth system, 1.5 million km away from Earth, and thus about nine
times the size of the Moon, in order to create a solar eclipse
somewhere on Earth permanently.

Of course, no such satellite exists. But a normal sized satelite, such
as the SOHO satellite at your link, can certainly, in the vacuum of
space, use a tiny occulting disk to create a permanent solar eclipse
for one of its cameras.

John Savard