Mercury to transit the sun May 9. Get your telescopes ready now.

[Aethon]

Image credit Starry Night Software

 

Not as rare as a Venus transit, still it only happens 13 or 14 times a century.

http://www.space.com/32476-mercury-transit-may-2016-rare-event.html

 

 

Edited April 6, 2016 by Aethon

[cubinator]

Cool! I may be prompted to buy a solar filter for my telescope. I would only get to observe a half hour or so because I have to go to school  on my birthday  when I could be watching Mercury transiting the Sun 

It's too bad I don't have an astronomy class this year, it would be really easy to convince the teacher to let us go outside and observe it!

Edited April 7, 2016 by cubinator

[tater]

For my small kids and a Venus transit, I took the eyepiece off the Newtonian, and projected the sun on a wall so it was about 1m in diameter, then let them watch it on the wall. It helps that I have a room where the ceiling is nearly 50% glass.

[Scotius]

Remember people - use filter or project the image on a screen like tater did. Never try to observe Sun directly through telescope or binocular. It will destroy your eyesight.

[Matuchkin]

13 hours ago, Scotius said:

Remember people - use filter or project the image on a screen like tater did. Never try to observe Sun directly through telescope or binocular. It will destroy your eyesight.

Within a second.

[Darnok]

Just now, Matuchkin said:

Within a second.

You can look twice, so I would say two seconds

[Matuchkin]

2 minutes ago, Darnok said:

You can look twice, so I would say two seconds

Masochism?

[fredinno]

11 hours ago, Matuchkin said:

Masochism?

???