A
Sun-watching observatory caught four planets
in its camera eye in a rare treat of orbital mechanics.
For only
the second time in its history, the Solar and
Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) recorded a planetary quartet around the Sun on Nov. 11, when Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and Mars all appeared in the space telescope’s
view.
“It’s
just kind of a neat thing,” Steele Hill, a NASA spokesperson for SOHO, told SPACE.com. “You never know how bright they’re going to be.”
The
planetary line-up came on the heels of Mercury’s
transit across the Sun, which occurred on Nov. 8 [image].
This
labeled view is taken from SOHO’s Large Angle Spectrometric Coronograph,
which blots out the Sun to take other measurements.
-- Tariq Malik
Credit: LASCO/SOHO/NASA/ESA.
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