On Wed, 3 Jan 2001, R.H. van Gent wrote: > The LASCO (Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph) instrument is designed > to observe the solar corona (the very faint outer atmosphere of the > Sun). > > The bright object left of the Sun in the LASCO C3 image is Mercury and > the horizontal line appears to be an instrumental artefact. With the aid > of a star atlas or a PC planetarium program you can easily recognize > some of the brighter stars of Sagittarius in the background and if you > would look tomorrow or a few days later you will notice that both the > Sun as Mercury have moved with respect to these stars.
I saved images from 17:18 and 21:18 today, placing them side-by-side on a single page. By superimposing the two (either look "through" or crossed eyes), I can easily see the Mercury has shifted vs. the background stars, and even the solar occulting disk appears to float slightly above the starfield! Thanks for the information on this site! Dave
