WATCH: The Most Remarkable Footage of Mercury Passing Across The Sun

On May 9, 2016, the planet Mercury passed between the Sun and Earth. The event, called a transit, only happens 13 times a century was captured by astronomers around the world, but the best footage of Mercury's passing was captured by the Big Bear Solar Observatory, located in the San Bernardino Mountains in California.

Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) said that their New Solar Telescope is considered to be the "highest-resolution solar telescope in the world." That is mainly the reason why it was capable of providing the sharpest view of a Mercury transit to date. A combined video footage of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and NST's footage was released. Halfway through the video, it transitions from NASA's footage to the BBSO's footage, showing the higher resolution that the observatory's telescope can take, the Verge reported.

ABC10 mentioned that the high-resolution video shows the tiny planet's transit in the most remarkable detail. Upon closer examination of the NST's footage, we noticed a few weird things about the planet during its transit. The last time Mercury cross the Sun's path was in 2006, before Big Bear Solar's New Solar Telescope was built. 

"The 1.6-m diameter NST telescope is the highest-resolution solar telescope in the world, so its images are the sharpest," observatory officials said.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory or SDO also managed to capture the entire 7.5 hours of the planet's transit across the sun. This composite image of Mercury's journey across the sun was created with visible-light images from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager on SDO.

"Astronomers get excited when any two things come close to each other in the heavens," said Louis Mayo, program manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "This is a big deal for us."

According to goldrushcam.com, although Mercury whips around the sun every 88 days - over four times faster than Earth - the three bodies rarely align. That is because Mercury orbits in a plane 7 degrees tilted from Earth's orbit, it usually darts above or below our line of sight to the sun. Mercury transits have been key to helping astronomers throughout history: In 1631, astronomers first observed a Mercury transit. Those observations allowed astronomers to measure the apparent size of Mercury's disk, as well as help them estimate the distance from Earth to the sun.

"Back in 1631, astronomers were only doing visual observations on very small telescopes by today's standards," said Mayo.

Scientists for the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO (jointly operated by NASA and ESA, the European Space Agency), and NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, worked together to study the May 9 transit.

The Hinode solar mission also observed the event. Hinode is collaboration between the space agencies of Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.