Transit of Mercury today

[peteralway]

As I type, Mercury has passed halfway in front of the sun in a rare (like once-a-dcade-ish) event called a Transit of Mercury. Not only do you need safe viewing precautions, but at least binoculars to make out tiny Mercury against the sun (unlike the much rarer transit of Venus a few years back where you just had to worry about going blind

Comments

[kjn]

Ooh! Nice pictures! Makes it even more impressive that it was discovered in antiquity, both due to its size and it being adjacent to a Huge Eye-Destroying Object.

[peteralway]

Well, to be fair, it's easier to see when sunlit at night.

[acmespaceship]

Woo-hoo! Nice shots. Hope you get a bunch of students to see it.

[peteralway]

I got two to see it. And another instructor's physics class that stopped by.

[tigertoy]

As usual when there's an interesting astronomical event, it's cloudy here, so I don't get to see if I can resolve Mercury in a projected image.

[peteralway]

Projected with binoculars would work (er, would have worked), pinhole not so much.

[tigertoy]

It sort of cleared up just at the end. With binoculars, I projected a very pretty image of the wispy clouds in front of the sun... but I couldn't see any black dots on the disc.

[hrrunka]

I caught some of the early part of the transit (but missed the very beginning) here, using my little Coronado H-alpha scope. However, by mid-transit the skies had clouded over, and now it is trying to rain...

Ah, well... We had perfect weather for this century's first transit of Venus, so can't complain too much...

[peteralway]

Not that I've checked, nor do I know what your lifespan will be, but I'm guessing you'll get another chance. The previous transit of Mercury here was rained out.

[hrrunka]

Yeah, transits of Mercury come round a little more often than transits of Venus. I count myself lucky to have seen both of this century's latter events.