BepiColombo time lapse shows Mercury surface in unparalleled detail 🌑 The European Space Agency have released a time lapse of all the images from BepiColombo's recent Mercury flyby, its last before it starts orbiting the solar system’s innermost world in late 2026. Since launching in 2018, the joint European-Japanese BepiColombo spacecraft has flown by Mercury six times, using each successive approach to reduce its speed and adjust its flight path to make it easier to get into orbit. While the

Time-lapse of Mercury crossing the Sun! That tiny black dot moving across the bright solar disk? That’s Mercury in action during a rare transit event. These transits don’t happen often — only about 13 times per century! This one happened on May 9, 2016, and took almost 7½ hours to cross the Sun, but SDO’s cameras made it fast enough for us to watch in seconds. It’s incredible to see our solar system in motion — Mercury, the smallest planet, making its mark on the Sun! 🌍☀️ 📸 Credit: NASA/SDO #N