On Wednesday, November 8, observers in the Western Hemisphere and Pacific will be able to see the planet Mercury cross the face of the sun. Such “transits of Mercury” are fairly rare, so if you’ve got access to welding glasses or a telescope with a sun filter, it’s worth a look. (I’ll be using my NASA glasses left over from the transit of Venus in June 2004.) Your science teachers may be able to help.
You can find more details here.
More (added November 8–better late than never):
There are lots of links (including Webcasts) and information at NASA’s Sun-Earth Day site:
http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2007/events/mercurytransit.php
The Exploratorium in San Francisco offers a Webcast and information about how to build a viewer for the transit.
–Robert
My science teacher is asking where I learn about these things.
YESSSS!!!! SECOND POST!!!!!!!
Your clock is being 2 hours ahead of mine.
What time???
About the glasses, my dad said he’ll see what he can find.
Kewl!!!
Oh joy. 5th post.
Ooooh, cool. Mybe dad’s got a welders helmate somewhere… It’d be cool to see.
Mercury retrograde!
My science teacher already knew about it. CRAP.
TENTH POST! HEEEEEEEEEE!
What is a transit?
A transit is a passage across something. In this case, Mercury is crossing the face of the sun.
I want to try to see that! it would be very interesting. i don’t know….I might be in gym. hey, i think it will be raining! Darn it!
*retinas burn out*
That’s actually really cool. Watching cosmic events. I love stargazing. Everything’s just so…massive. And out there, you know?
Really gives you a sense of proportion. Depressing. In an uplifting sort of way.
I need to know how to watch it. And I don’t own binoculars, so I can’t do that one thing where you tape a binocular to a big piece of cardboard and hold another cardboard piece further out. It just doesn’t work.
(without the binoculars…. I’m sure it works with them)
You can view eclipses by using a pin to poke a perfectly round hole in a piece of aluminum foil, and projecting the dot of light onto a piece of white cardboard. I’m not sure whether Mercury is big enough to show up that way, but it might be worth a try. (It helps if you stiffen the foil by stretching it across a frame–say, a bigger square hole cut in another piece of cardboard–and taping it down.)
Again, I’m not sure this works for transits.
I watched it on my computer.
NOOOOOOO! It’s all rainy and cloudy today. I can’t see it. *despairs*
You can see good live photos from the SOHO orbiting telescope here:
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/soc/transits/mercury/20061108/realtime.html
It will be going on for a few more hours, so there’s still time.
This planet looks very interesting on a website.
THank you for the link robert
MAN!!!!! I missed it!!!! Poo!!
[/sad]
No, you haven’t! Check the link in comment 19. Mercury is still crossing. It won’t slide off the sun’s face for about another hour.
The happy and sad news of my Transit watchings…..
Happy: I figured out how to see Mercury. Also, I saw it for approximately 4 seconds,
BADDD!!!!: as the sun was DANGITALL SETTING!!!!! It WAS the sun, too, because it took me several tries to get a place without our neighbor’s annoying yard in the way. My eyes hurt, too………. I had to keep looking at the sun to find where it was. And my mom got really mad at me because I was so worked up about it.
22- Well, I realized that. It’s pitch black where I live!! Seriously, I’m on blog time and it’s dark out!! Sorry for the sarcasm.
Mom wouldn’t let me possibly blind myself to see a cool thing. It rained all day hard – there was a flash flood watch. I haven’t seen the sun since yesterday. The online images look really cool, though. Now it’s still raining and the sun’s set, but I have a computer.
I missed it. But I don’t live on the Pacific, I live in New York City, so I don’t think I would have been able to see it anyway.
*goes to look at pictures*
Here are some images/movies I found on robert’s link which I thought were cool. Just in case someone hasn’t already seen them. If the blog will let me post them.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/2006_11_06/mdi.mpg
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/2006_11_06/Merctransit2006a.tif
Mercury is so small!
(27) Nice, Isabella, thanks!
Warning to those with dial-up, however: the download times are lengthy. Catch up on reading some great but neglected threads while you wait.