Proba-2 watches Mercury transit

ESA’s Proba-2 had a ring-side seat for the transit of Mercury on 11 November 2019. Proba-2 monitors the Sun from Earth orbit and was able to spot Mercury’s transit as a small black disc – seen here moving from left to right across the face of the Sun. The images in this movie were taken with the satellite’s extreme ultraviolet telescope. Solar transits – where a celestial body is seen to pass across the solar disc from the perspective of Earth – are relatively rare events. Mercury undergoes around 13 tra