The path of Mercury’s planetary transit is seen in a NASA conceptual image, made of many images captured by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) during the last Mercury transit in 2006.
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Space enthusiasts across the globe witnessed Mercury as a black dot on the solar disc as the planet traversed the face of the Sun on Monday, may 9, 2016.
The phenomenon is a relatively rare one which occurs 13 or 14 times in a century. The 7.5-hour transit was in view for the first time since 2006.
Mercury’s transit is entirely visible from western Europe, north-western Africa and throughout much of the Americas.
Almost a dozen telescopes were equipped with safe solar filters, as observing the sun improperly can result in permanent eye damage.
From Earth, the planet Mercury seemingly trudged along Monday as it passed between us and the sun.
❯❯ Click the Icon below to share this post…… The transit will last for a total of about 7 1/2 hours. The passage is known as transiting, and it was only visible through a telescope or binoculars.
– Slooh.com, which offers live telescope viewing via the Internet, will host a show on its website featuring images of Mercury taken by observatories around the globe.
Mercury begins its transit across the sun.
“This is a rare astronomical event that takes place roughly only 10 times in a century”.
Mercury completes one lap around the sun every 88 days, so the little planet crosses the plane of Earth’s orbit every 44 days – once while moving “up” and again while coming back “down”.
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Gathering more data about how much light Mercury blocks from the sun during the transit could help scientists further refine how they look for small alien worlds in other solar systems. The next transit of Mercury won’t occur until 2019.
