Comments on: Hot Shots of Mercury

Hot Shots of Mercury

carter — Tue, 06 May 2003 17:31:54 -0800

The transit of Mercury. About thirteen times a century, the orbits of Earth and Mercury align in such a way that Mercury can be observed passing across the disk of the sun. The next transit is from 0740 to 1317 GMT, May 7th, and will be webcast from NASA's orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Hot Shots page. NASA also has a piece on the seventeenth century mathematician and astronomerJohannes Kepler, who predicted (but died before observing) transits of Mercury and Venus.More info on space. com, including a viewer's guide and a history of previous observations.

By: carter

carter — Tue, 06 May 2003 17:32:47 -0800

My first FPP ... yikes!

By: Zonker

Zonker — Tue, 06 May 2003 17:48:29 -0800

And a good one at that, carter, thanks. I've always been fascinated by anything that gives a sense of scale to the solar system, as that first picture of the simulated transit from your first link does. (And on a slightly related note, the Astronomy Picture of the Day site has been posting some really spectacular images lately, as in here, here and here.)

By: MidasMulligan

MidasMulligan — Tue, 06 May 2003 17:53:54 -0800

Righteous FPP.

By: eddydamascene

eddydamascene — Tue, 06 May 2003 18:05:03 -0800

That SOHO gallery is FILLED with mpeg movies -- solar flares, comet transits. Very cool, carter.

By: plep

plep — Wed, 07 May 2003 00:23:51 -0800

Yes, righteous indeed. Thanks carter!

By: Fourmyle

Fourmyle — Wed, 07 May 2003 00:25:07 -0800

Thanks for the timely tip-off about this event, carter. It's very much a Total Perspective Vortex experience, watching that impossibly miniscule black speck of a planet make its way across the face of a star.

By: plep

plep — Wed, 07 May 2003 01:01:40 -0800

1999 Transit of Mercury Gallery. Courtesy of the Exploratorium.

By: Songdog

Songdog — Wed, 07 May 2003 05:50:41 -0800

Thanks for the great FPP, carter! I've been waiting for SOHO images of the current transit.

By: carter

carter — Wed, 07 May 2003 07:39:24 -0800

Thanks, y'all, and thanks for the link, Plep; the movies on that page are great. I agree, Zonker, actually watching the solar system at work is fun (I like lunar eclipses - you can see the earth's round shadow creeping across the moon's surface, and picture how they move about each other). FYI, next year's transit of Venus (June 2004) will be the first since 1882; so we can see something no-one alive has ever seen. Googling around, there's some interesting stories of Victorian explorers who journeyed around the world in the 1800s to try and observe it.

By: Songdog

Songdog — Wed, 07 May 2003 10:00:05 -0800

Not to mention Captain Cook, whose first Pacific voyage in the late 1760s included a stop at Tahiti to watch the transit of 1769. By the way, the SOHO server is pretty slow right now, so I grabbed a favorite shot and posted it at my site. If you've got the patience and bandwidth, though, do check out the SOHO movies, which are amazing.

By: Songdog

Songdog — Wed, 07 May 2003 10:01:51 -0800

Sorry - I had polite self-link warnings in that post, but they vanished after a successful preview.

By: plep

plep — Wed, 07 May 2003 10:58:52 -0800

Some drawings from Cook's voyage and observations of the transit of Venus.

By: plep

plep — Wed, 07 May 2003 11:00:02 -0800

Thanks for the pic, Songdog!

By: carter

carter — Wed, 07 May 2003 12:07:45 -0800

Two other sites I came across on the transit of Venus are Willie Koort's linkalicious account of observations by astronomers in 1882 from Wellington, South Africa, and that of author David Sellers. Wandering off-topic, Tom Standage has a great book (which I've just read) on the efforts of nineteenth century astronomers to locate the planet Neptune, based on observations of anomalies in the orbit of Uranus. Even further off-topic, Standage also wrote a great book on nineteenth century telegraph technology called "The Victorian Internet."

By: carter

carter — Wed, 07 May 2003 12:45:25 -0800

P.S. - Yup the server was getting slow - but I was up at 0200 MST and was able to grab some images. I compiled a few of those into a jpeg here. Mercury is quite visible in nthe upper half of then pictures. I guess this is also a kind of self-link - but not a site or blog, just a place to park a jpeg on the server for a couple of days ...

By: Xoc

Xoc — Wed, 07 May 2003 15:22:53 -0800

One of my favorite stories about transits, in this case of Venus: Probably the most heartbreaking story is that of the Frenchman Le Gentil (1725-1792), who planned to observe the 1761 transit [of Venus] from Pondicherry, in India. Unfortunately, before he could arrive, Pondicherry was taken by the British, who of course had no desire to welcome Le Gentil. So the ship turned around and the hapless astronomer was reduced to observing the transit from the boat, where accurate timing was impossible. He decided to stop in Mauritius and stay for the eight years before the next transit, spending the time observing the local flora and fauna. He set up to observe the 1769 transit from Pondicherry again, where the British were now directed to aid him, but on the fateful day, a single cloud hid the event from his eyes.

By: Songdog

Songdog — Wed, 07 May 2003 19:42:50 -0800

carter- that's a really nice group of images; thanks for sharing it!