Transit of Mercury on 7 May
Mercury is an odd planet - the length of it’s day is greater that it’s year and temperatures can reach from 430 C during the day to -180 C during the night. On Wednesday, 7th of May Mercury will appear to cross in front of the disk of Sun seen as a tiny black dot from the Earth. This event is called a Transit of Mercury and it is a rare event, occuring on avegage only 13 times each century.
Only Transits of Mercury and Venus can occur (as they are the only 2 planets orbiting closer to the Sun than the Earth). Transit events have been used historicly to accurately measure distances to the Sun (like the transit of Venus in 1761 and 1769). Unfortunately, transits of Mercury cannot be observed with the naked eye (transits of Venus are much larger and can be seen), however a number of transit-cams will be available to see this event. Here’s some usefull links:
SOHO 2003 Mercury Transit
SpaceWeather.com
Sky and Telescope article
chris on May 5th 2003 in Uncategorized
One Response to “Transit of Mercury on 7 May”
Jason responded on 26 May 2003 at 5:54 pm #
Went to the SOHO site and checked out the MPG from SOHO. Very cool. thanks for the post. Any other exciting astrological events scheduled for this year?