Transit of Mercury
There will another transit of Mercury
across the disk of the Sun on May 9, 2016 ftrom 7:26AM until
2:42PM. There are approximately 13
Mercury transits per century. Telescopes with solar filters will
be pointed at the sun to view any sunspots and the transit of
Mercury. Mercury will have an angular diameter of only 12
arcsec; the Sun will have an angular diameter of 31 arcmin and 17
arcsec. This means that Mercury will be 0.005 times smaller than
the sun in angular diameter. First contact is at 7:26AM, and mid
transit at 10:57AM and ends at around 2:42PM. The first transit
of Mercury was seen through a telescope in 1631 Nobember 7 by Pierre Gassendi
(philosopher, priest, scientist,
astronomer, and mathematician) in France before the first transit of
Venus in 1639 November 24 by Jeremiah
Horrocks (cleric, tutor, astronomer, scientist and
mathematcian) in England at Much Hoole near Liverpool.
If it is cloudy we will still hold the event,
but we will view the event from the first floor of the parking garage
instead of the roof of the parking garage. This will be possible
with a computer with an internet connection to a telescope further
west, where it will be clear, a video projector, and a screen. In
the summer
of 2004 June 8 when the transit of Venus occurred a similar set up
was available; we had good weather that morning and more than 500
people saw it that morning as the sun rose. In the summer
of 2012 June 5 we were clouded out from viewing the transit of
Venus, but did watch it from Hawaii via the Internet; around 60 people
tried with us despite the very cloudy weather.
There was a visible transit of Mercury
across the disk of the Sun in the Washington DC Metro area on
Wednesday, November 8, 2006 a little after 2:00 PM until sunset (
around 5:00 PM), which we viewed. because of the clouds on
the Internet from the Planetarium,
where it is always clear, at the Takoma Park/Silver Spring
campus of Montgomery
College. See Fred Espenak, NASA/GSFC, transit of Mercury pages at
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/OH/transit06.html.
Internet Transit of Mercury sites:
Wikipeadia in
English
Montgomery
College's planetarium
Last changed 12:22M June 27, 2012