Mercury 1999 Transit

Mercury Transit

Basic Information

Mercury will transit the corona off-limb as seen from SOHO. The closest approach to the limb will be ~ 92.64 arc seconds. Mercury's closest angular approach to the Sun will be 1999/11/15 21:42:02 UTC. ( ~ 52 hours before predicted Leonids peak). As seen from Earth, the transit occurs from 21:16 - 22:07 UT.

Instrument Plans

CDS to run off-limb studies to look for Mercury, both for coronal and instrument scatter studies.
TRACE spacecraft to perform stray light measurements. TRACE movie of Mercury Transit
EIT movie of Mercury Transit

SOHO Coordinate Information

Updated plot showing the path of Mercury with respect to EIT field-of-view

SOHO coordinates below in the GSE RLP frame. Time is UTC. The states are in X,Y,Z, Vx, Vy, Vz order in units of km and km/sec. At these epochs SOHO is just a few days or so beyond an RLP XZ plane crossing and well south--about 133,000 km--of the ecliptic plane.

Date UT X Y Z Vx Vy Vz

15 Nov 21:42:02 -1648672.29816972 92255.1851377898 -133113.471081426 0.0330075270761128 0.263128310102147 0.00583647722778836

16 Nov 12:00:00 -1646907.34168360 105813.994957988 -132788.948384268 0.0355350554414882 0.263632125667866 0.00676981113747941

Date	UT	X	Y	Z	Vx	Vy	Vz
15 Nov	21:42:02	-1648672.29816972	92255.1851377898	-133113.471081426	0.0330075270761128	0.263128310102147	0.00583647722778836
16 Nov	12:00:00	-1646907.34168360	105813.994957988	-132788.948384268	0.0355350554414882	0.263632125667866	0.00676981113747941

[an error occurred while processing this directive] Last modification: Monday, 28-Jun-2004 13:56:25 EDT