Perhaps you’ve already heard, but a somewhat uncommon astronomical event happens today, Monday, May 9. The rest of us, though, got a chance to marvel at the coolness of it all.
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“It’s all about perspective”, said NASA planetary sciences chief Jim Green.
The rare journey, known as a “transit”, will make Mercury look like a black dot gliding across the sun’s face starting around 7:12AM.
“The transit of Mercury on November 13, 2032 will be visible again from India”, Deputy Director, Nehru Planetarium, Delhi, N Rathnasree said.
But the solar system’s small, innermost planet actually was zooming past at 106,000 miles per hour in a rare event.
According to the scientists, the transit is best pointed in eastern North America, South America, Western Europe, Africa and some parts of Asia. Mercury’s journey can also be seen via a livestream on NASA Television online as well as a website dedicated to the transit showing satellite imagery.
To see the event, you will need to look at the sun using solar filters, which strip away more than 99 per cent of the sun’s light to protect human eyes from damage.
Society Secretary Stuart Atkinson said: “Transits like this aren’t scientifically important – we have sent probes to Mercury which have told us all about it – they are really just fascinating events to watch”.
If you were hoping to watch the Mercury transit live and missed it, your next opportunity will be 2019.
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Mercury’s transit only happens about 13 times per century, because Earth, the sun, and Mercury rarely align perfectly. Eclipse glasses were useless for spotting 3,000-mile-wide Mercury as it crossed the 864,000-mile diameter of the sun. The entire event you’ll be seeing below took place over the course of seven and a half hours.
