Strange anomaly next to Venus on SOHO?

Does anyone know what this strange anomly next to Venus in the Latest SOHO image(s) is?

sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov...

It was covered up maybe here:

sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov...

It's just another very bright little object.

If the latest image is updated and it is no longer visible, it is posted below and I have it on my PC.

EDITED - corrected and added link(s)

[edit on 10-6-2004 by AgentSmith]

humm, I would have said it was a comet but i don't see its tails, unless its moving towards SOHO and this is why you can't see the tails.
It is very bright. I don't know, lets wait and see what our astronomers at ATS have to say about it.

I'm confused, isn't the circle in the middle covering the sun, and the bright object Venus?

The only strange object near venus is a square cutout/bad feed above-left??

Here is the image:


The circle in the middle does indeed cover the sun - so we can see the corona I believe? - But you can see venus to the right of it and just slightly up and to the right of Venus you can see another small planetoid type object.

Does anyone know if it's Mercury maybe?

Ah, that's a different image than your original link.

I only see the sun, covered like AgentSmith said, Venus at the right side and the normal stars. Can you explain where you see this anomaly?

Edit: Sorry, the link in our post was different. Please ignore this.

[edit on 10-6-2004 by amantine]

I do apologise, I had pasted the wrong link! (As you can see in that the one the object was covered up.

Here is a close up.

Neat, is there some sort of time lapse of images we can see?
Does it just appear suddenly, or ?

I'm pretty sure that's Mercury, the only things that saturate the
imaging system like that are comets and planets. It doesn't seem
to have a tail, so, I think Mercury.

Sometimes the imager will be hit with a bunch of protons after a
solar eruption, and that will cause spots on the imager also, but there
is usually more than 1 on an image, in those cases

That is most definitly not mercury, which would appear much further to the right as we look at at it. I can't find any stars in my charts in that position of that magnitude either. Curious indeed.

lots of those things have showed up on soho.
maybe they really are reptilian invasion motherships from draco!


check this link for other pics. these guys mention raytheon. intelgurl know anything?

I think it might be Mercury.

Here's how they line up now.

Where's Merc?

ok, Looked at that link again.
It's real close. I'm not 100% sure
Another pair of eyes check it out for us please?

Here is an image from My program Starry Night stellarium of that time and date. I ran it forward and backward 5 hours to see it there was a difference in the distance and there isn't. So at anywhere from UT time give or take 5 hours this is the image. I suppose it would depend on where SOHO is located and I am not familiar with that. It looks like it is probably Mercury though.

Nutzo

Edited for shpeeling.





[edit on 10-6-2004 by nutzobalzo]

SOHO position

[edit on 10-6-2004 by spacedoubt]

Originally posted by spacedoubt
Nutzo,

I found this regarding the orbit of SOHO.
It's at an orbit 1.5 million kilometers closer to the sun than
earth. At a point where the sun an earth have equal attraction.

It also revolves in a halo pattern around that imaginary point in space.
Pretty cool eh?

I think, with parallax taken into account, that it's probably Merc.
I just can't find a dang image from the correct perspective!

How do you like that Starry night software? I literally JUST downloaded the demo. Have not installed it yet..

It's awesome dude. Much better than Winstars. There are satellites on the program and the cool thing is you can go to any body in the universe and look at space from that perspective. I could go to Spica and look at the sky from there or I can go to the Suyuz craft and look from there or the IST etc... Soho is not on the program however and I can't find a download for it. If anyone can find where I can DL satellites or anything else for Starry Night I would appreciate it. Especialy SOHO. You can also zoom and all that stuff, check it out.


Nutzo

it's lens flare...what else, i don't think it's mercury though

There is an animated GIF here, it just seems to appear?

sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov...

I have also just checked the last 10 images and it does just seem to appear.

I guess we will have to see what the next picture(s) shows up?!

AgentSmith,

Yeah, I see that..just at the end of the movie. Hmm

My theory.
I also notice that the image of venus gets dimmer as it
aproaches the sun.
Could it be some protective electrical biasing on the imaging system?
I mean, like turning the sensitivity down, then back up, to protect the CCD's
It did show up Right after a Flare....Hey, I'm guessing, got nothing else to do right now..