November 19, 1999
On the day you were born, the universe did what it has always done best: transformed chaos into beauty.
Mercury And The Sun
Birthday · November 19, 1999
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
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APOD published November 19, 1999. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Just days before the peak of the Leonid meteor shower, skywatchers were offered another astronomical treat as planet Mercury crossed the face of the Sun on November 15. Viewed from planet Earth, a transit of Mercury is not all that rare. The last occurred in 1993 and the next will happen in 2003. Enjoying a mercurial transit does require an appropriately filtered telescope, still the event can be dramatic as the diminutive well-done world drifts past the dominating solar disk. This slow loading gif animation is based on images recorded by the earth-orbiting TRACE satellite. The false-color TRACE images were made in ultraviolet light and tend to show the hot gas just above the Sun's visible surface. Mercury's disk is silhouetted against the seething plasma as it follows a trajectory near the edge of the Sun.