# November 11: Transit of Mercury



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Monday, November 11, will bring an opportunity for some (many, perhaps) to view the planet Mercury creeping slowly in silhouette across the disk of the sun. It will appear as a tiny yet hard-edged black dot moving east to west, distinct from any fuzzy-edged sunspots that may also be present. It will be at midpoint in its transit at 15:20 UT. This means that the entire transit will be visible for roughly the eastern 3rd of North America and all of South America. Western NA viewers will see the transit already in progress at sunrise; Europeans will see the transit in progress at sunset. The entire transit takes 5 and a half hours.

A reminder: one must *never* attempt to view solar phenomena using an optical aid--binoculars, telescope--without a dedicated solar filter fitted to the objective lens or lenses of the instrument, the lens or lenses farthest from the eye. Eyepiece filters are notoriously unreliable and dangerous.


----------



## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Interesting. According to Wikipedia:

Transits of Mercury with respect to Earth are much more frequent than transits of Venus, with about 13 or 14 per century, in part because Mercury is closer to the Sun and orbits it more rapidly.

Transits of Mercury occur in May or November. The last four transits occurred on November 15, 1999; May 7, 2003; November 8, 2006; and May 9, 2016. The next will occur on November 11, 2019, and then on November 13, 2032. A typical transit lasts several hours.

Nothing for another 13 years after this fleeting event!


----------



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

oh! I still have my old eclipse glasses from the time when we had the solar eclipse here in the US! I'll wanna see this, if I don't need binoculars.


----------



## Guest (Nov 1, 2019)

This is going to result in a lot of blind people, I think.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> oh! I still have my old eclipse glasses from the time when we had the solar eclipse here in the US! I'll wanna see this, if I don't need binoculars.


I'd guess you'll need some serious magnification since Mercury, from here, is quite small. Maybe a 3-inchish telescope with a projection screen, which is often included in low-end kits (about $60 on Amazon).


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> oh! I still have my old eclipse glasses from the time when we had the solar eclipse here in the US! I'll wanna see this, if I don't need binoculars.


You will need some magnification to see the transit; unmagnified eclipse glasses will not be powerful enough. Mercury will appear to be the size of a small sunspot.

It's likely that a science-oriented TV channel may show some of the transit.


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

The viewing of the transit went off without a hitch here in my part of Nova Caesarea. I got out the small refractor telescope, fitted the solar filter over the objective lens, and selected an eyepiece yielding about 70X magnification, and looked at the sun. No sunspots at all to possibly confuse matters; there indeed was that tiny hard-edged black dot--the silhouetted planet Mercury--slowly creeping across the disk of the sun. I lured a dozen or so passers-by in my little community here to take a look--all were fascinated, intrigued, as I gave each instruction in what they were to see and just what it was they were seeing: evidence that Mercury exists, is really tiny compared to the sun, and orbits its star just as we do. Great weather, ideal conditions, happy and appreciative viewers--a fine transit. I told all to alert the kids and grandkids about the next such transit, visible in our neck of the woods, in 2049.


----------



## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

Astrologers say Mercury will now be much more influential in our lives.

For a few more years the Sun will pass very close, again and again, to the dangerous Dark Rift in Sagittarius on the December solstice. We don't hear much about the 2012 end of the world anymore.


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Strange. No mention of the transit on our local (Philadelphia) network news/weather. A discussion of sundogs as a phenomenon, and the coming weather systems......


----------



## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

The whole last year was soo dark 4 me, that I saw ''retrograde'' Mercurry everywhere...


----------



## philoctetes (Jun 15, 2017)

Dark indeed... on Nov 11 I was on the road evacuating from fires in Sonoma County...


----------

