Astroquiz

Finally solved after 695 attempts on Apr. 17, 2001!!!

And the winner is...
What's that?

...Esko Lyytinen from Finland (esko.lyytinen@www.fi). Congratulations!

The task was to uncover the nature of this beautiful picture. I have gotten about a hundred E-mails with answers in 5 years! Versions varied from comet's tail through black hole to cosmological theories of Universe and so on. But the truth was much closer to us, namely in Solar system.

Esko wrote: 

Without going to check further for example by checking the orientation of
the orbit, my quess is that your Astroquiz represents the apparent location
of the planet Mercury relative to the Sun, in (equatorial coordinates)
during a timespan of a number of years.
And this is right to the head of the nail! Little circle in the center of the image is the Sun itself in true scale.

Esko gets the signed prints of my photos of Comet Hale-Bopp and unique picture of Iridium flare between Jupiter and Saturn.

By the way, if you count the dots, you will see there are 4750 of them - one per day, one after one during 13 years. After that period positions of Mercury nearly repeat.

The image clearly shows why Mercury is better observed from the Southern hemisphere: during its aphelion elongations (up to 28 degrees from Sun) Mercury's declination is lower. That's why it is not seen from the mid-northern latitudes. In May 2001 Mercury is not that far from the Sun, but its declination is higher and one can find it in the evening near Jupiter and Pleiades.

I also recommend to check out this beautiful photo from Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD) which shows Mercury's path over 20 days in turn during its elongation.

Denis Denissenko denis@hea.iki.rssi.ru

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