Mercury's Transit on May 9th, 2016

[ProtoJeb21]

Poor Mercury, the most forgettable and neglected planet in our solar system. It's transiting the Sun on May 9th, yet nobody has made a thread about it! So, here's part of my Mercury Awareness. What are your thoughts about the transit, and are people going to be viewing it?

[Scotius]

I'm sure astronomers - professional and amateur, will be all over it. Planet transfers do not happen all that often. And there's always science data to get from such event. General public? Not so much. I doubt many will bother. And of course there is always the weather. Right now the sky above my house is overcast. Tomorrow? Who knows

[PB666]

37 minutes ago, Scotius said:

I'm sure astronomers - professional and amateur, will be all over it. Planet transfers do not happen all that often. And there's always science data to get from such event. General public? Not so much. I doubt many will bother. And of course there is always the weather. Right now the sky above my house is overcast. Tomorrow? Who knows

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-mercury-transit-science-20160506-story.html

Watch the click bait stuff.

[UmbralRaptor]

Since the weather in some places (eg: where I am) looks to be rather overcast, it looks like some of us will need to follow the NASA feeds?

http://mercurytransit.gsfc.nasa.go

http://sdoisgo.blogspot.com/2016/04/mercury-transit-on-may-9-2016.html

Edited May 8, 2016 by UmbralRaptor

[ProtoJeb21]

In my area, it's going to be mostly clear while the transit is going on. But I'm going to be at school. Either I sneak in a mini homemade Eclipse Viewer (okay, I'm kidding. Maybe), or I just take the risk and look at the transit until my eyes become well-cooked meatballs.

[cubinator]

3 hours ago, ProtoJeb21 said:

In my area, it's going to be mostly clear while the transit is going on. But I'm going to be at school. Either I sneak in a mini homemade Eclipse Viewer (okay, I'm kidding. Maybe), or I just take the risk and look at the transit until my eyes become well-cooked meatballs.

Same.  For me, it starts when the sun is about 2° above the horizon, below the treetops unfortunately. I heard the start and the end are the most interesting parts. The transit will be over by the time I get home, but I'll get up early tomorrow so I can at least see it after the sun rises. I made a solar filter specifically for this event, I hope it isn't obscured by clouds during the short hour or so I'll be able to observe it for!

Btw Mercury is too small to see without a telescope, so don't cook your eyes for nothing. And a pinhole camera would also be too small to see it. You'd need a telescope or maybe a very powerful pair of binoculars) with proper filtering.

[YNM]

I'm going to be on the dark side of the Earth during the whole transit...

Anyway, Mercury seems to be too small (and too faint) wrt the Sun's glare. You need at least a binocular, and please, Please, NEVER EVER look at magnified Sun image directly (not photographs of it). You'll damage your eye and the equipment as well.

Edited May 8, 2016 by YNM

[kookoo_gr]

For those that won't be able to see the transit here are some live streams

 

http://livestream.com/SkyandTelescope/Mercury

http://live.slooh.com/stadium/live/transit-of-mercury-2016

[kurja]

Looked at it with a 700/70 refractor & 9mm ocular / baader astrosolar film. Yup, it looked like a dot as expected ,) accompanied by a few sunspots.

[ProtoJeb21]

I was close to seeing the entire universe in blueshift today, but I think I spotted Mercury! Less than an hour before the transit ended, I was lucky enough to be in an outside lesson, so I attempted to see Mercury's transit. I looked at the sun through a nearly closed fist, and saw a VERY TINY dot VERY CLOSE to the edge of the Sun's disk. I hated how I missed the 2012 Venus transit and that I once despised Mercury, so I'm glad I was able to see the transit, even if my eyes got close to seeing everything in a blue tone. I'm fine now.

[Mr Shifty]

Very obvious against the disc of the sun. It was pretty overcast today here, so I thought we might miss it, but there were occasional holes in the cloud cover that gave us a look. It's surprisingly breathtaking to see little Mercury hurtling across the face of that fiery orb; you really do get a small glimpse of the scale involved.

[Exploro]

I missed it. Morning errands and work prevented me from observing the transit. Fortunately for those in my region who were interested in making observation the weather finally cleared out yesterday and it was mostly clear skies throughout the day.

Protojeb; I'm unfamiliar with the viewing technique? Do you look through the tiny aperture a closed fist makes or use your closed hand as an impromptu pin hole projector?

[PakledHostage]

5 hours ago, kurja said:

Looked at it with a 700/70 refractor & 9mm ocular / baader astrosolar film. Yup, it looked like a dot as expected ,) accompanied by a few sunspots.

I looked at it through my sextant. Indeed, it looked like a black dot. An interesting black dot, but just a black dot none the less.

[RA3236]

In my area, it is somewhat dark.

And of course late.

[PB666]

I read this somewhere that mercury has a teardrop shape when viewed from earth, but wth does mercury have a wake in the video?

http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2016/05/nasas_video_of_mercurys_transi.html

 

[cubinator]

@PB666 teardrop shape? Never heard of it, looked perfectly circular in my telescope. As for the wake, must be some kind of image processing effect. The videos were clearly created by stitching a series of images together, so maybe something happened there or the telescope does that thing where it makes an image with a series of exposures, during which Mercury would have moved.

[PB666]

5 minutes ago, cubinator said:

@PB666 teardrop shape? Never heard of it, looked perfectly circular in my telescope. As for the wake, must be some kind of image processing effect. The videos were clearly created by stitching a series of images together, so maybe something happened there or the telescope does that thing where it makes an image with a series of exposures, during which Mercury would have moved.

They said that when mercury approaches the disc of the sun from our perspective it was makes on a momentary teardrop shape.

 

[cubinator]

1 minute ago, PB666 said:

They said that when mercury approaches the disc of the sun from our perspective it was makes on a momentary teardrop shape.

 

Ah, I didn't get to see the start or end of it. I only saw it about an hour after the start.

Edited May 11, 2016 by cubinator

[Superfluous J]

1 minute ago, PB666 said:

They said that when mercury approaches the disc of the sun from our perspective it was makes on a momentary teardrop shape.

 

That sounds like the visual effect you whenever two things (in this case Mercury and the "nothing" outside the Sun's disc) get close to each other and you get a bit of bleed-over from one to the other.

[kookoo_gr]

More on the black drop effect for Venus and Mercury.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_drop_effect

Also this is my image i took from the transit, it is a composite image of photographs i took during the transit, sadly the whole transit was not visible were i live.

http://www.astrovox.gr/forum/album_pic.php?pic_id=19725

Finally two videos i took from the start of the transit.

 

For those interested the next Mercury transit is at November 2019

 

Edited May 12, 2016 by kookoo_gr

[Wjolcz]

Here's something nice: http://m.imgur.com/gallery/DoZSJKu

It's my phone wallpaper now.

[SuperFastJellyfish]

Mercury transit viewed by SDO: