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2003 Transit of Mercury
angkor writes "It is happening today (all day in Asia)!
NASA's SOHO page, Fred Espenak's 'Transit of Mercury' site, and live webcasts of the transit. You'll want to use the webcast, in spite of advice from our hometown paper, the Bangkok Post, which reported 'those interested in viewing it directly were advised to watch through black tinted glasses.'"
The transit is already over. Here is a direct link to the ESO site about it (with pictures). There's a Venus transit coming up next year, however, which is much rarer.
which reported 'those interested in viewing it directly were advised to watch through black tinted glasses.'"
Yeah, and then they don't need black glasses no more. Or any glasses, for that matter. Or even light.
It only takes a couple of stupid incidents like this to strike fear in parents and teachers everywhere. Now many schools close the blinds and go through what ammounts to a 'duck and cover' bomb drill whenever there's an eclipse.
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It'll have to idle in traffic waiting for it's turn to merge onto the highway.
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This is what your eyes will look like if you watch the event through dark tinted glasses.
No way. That's not nearly safe enough, project it onto a piece of white paper with a pinhole camera. Then you won't get the dark glasses obscuring your view, either. A little ingenuity often prevails over a little consumerism. ;)
And no cult proclaiming the end of the world? How odd..
Hopefully someone can answer this litle question of mine.
Since Mercury orbits the sun in only 88 days, why can we see transists more often than about 13 times a century (according to space.com)?
Same thing with Venus, since it's in a orbit inside ours it must *at least* pass earth on the 'inside track' once a year. Is it because the orbits a slightly inclined or sometihng?
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Nice images, but it would have been fun to see them while it was happening. by 9:00AM EST, it's already 1PM in England (just past the "transit at sunrise" area) and the sun has already set in India, smack dab in the middle of the "full transit visible" area. So it looks like we missed the whole thing by about five hours. I know the pictures are the same, but there's something nice about seeing the pictures when it's really happening.
But then again, the slashdot crowd would have pummeled the webcams. I'd rather let the people who are really interested in this stuff get to the site for the live webcasts. Those people certainly don't want a large group of mildly interested people drowning the servers.
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Don't forget about the total lunar eclipse coming in less than a week. [May 16]. Very romantic! Have fun.
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I'm no expert in these matters, but maybe the transits occur primarily at night when the sun is switched off. This would make sense because Mercury would probably catch on fire if it were to pass so close to the sun while it were hot.
--- Jason Olshefsky
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I guess I just don't quite understand something. The article *seems* to state that this event hasn't happened in 100 years. That doesn't make sense to me. As Mercury revolves around the sun in I believe 88 days, this should happen 4.x times during the Earths 365 day orbit. Maybe they were implying it just hadn't happened during the daytime in Bangkok in 100 years?
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Anyone in East Asia (I'm in Japan) is SOL according to that link. No eclipse visible here.
Those of you in Europe will get to see it around Moon-set. That sounds pretty cool, as long as the sunrise doesn't drown it out (and I guess it wouldn't). Anyone out there w/ a camera and a long lens (spotting scope, or telescope) care to wake up early and snap a few pictures?
You folks on the west coast of the States will get to see it at Moon-rise (read, sun-set), so grab your girlfriend (or at least a camera and long lens), head out and watch the sun-set and then turn around.
I'm jealous.
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for the record, this is posted on /. before the event. See this link over at NASA.
Summary: Atlantic Ocean, eastern half of the US, eastern third of Canada see the whole thing. People in Europe and Africa see it at moonset, while those in the rest of US and Canada see it at moonrise.
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This has very little significance.
a) It is not possible for 5 planets to transit the Sun, since only two planets are closer to the sun than Earth.
b) It has never happened before. (see a)
c) Alignments of several planets in a row do happen, if very rarely. The combined gravitational effect of the planets is still tiny when compared to that of the Sun which makes up the VAST majority of the mass of the solar system.
-- "Sponges grow in the ocean. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn't happen."
Don;t listen to thesr poeple, I spent hours as a kid starring at teh sun, adn my visoin is fine! ;]
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Oh sweet Christ. Not this again.
.00001 inches.
Look, all nine planets were aligned in 2000 or 2001. NOTHING HAPPENED. NOTHING WILL HAPPEN. The gravity of the first five planets is not significant enough to act on one another to that degree. Jupiter may be huge, but it's gravity is barely noticeable on Earth...I'd be surprised if it affected the tides more that
Regardless of where the planets are in regards to each other, there's always gravitational interaction...but it's not enough where you're going to see anything like you described.
*sigh* I'll be you're a product of the American public schools. (Not that I'm not, but I'm just trying to take a dig at the science taught in public schools here.)
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No living person has witnessed a Venus transit. The next one occurs June 8, 2004. If all goes well, on that day I'll be on a beach at a resort in Mauritius, with a video camera and a telescope, and I might actually succeed in capturing a DV stream. The weather prospects in Mauritius are not the best, but considering that the best prospects for clear skies are in Iran and Turkey, I'll take my chances in Mauritius.
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Hours before, and all during the transit all of the live sites, especially NASA's were incredibly slow, I though they must have been slashdotted, but I even checked to see if it was advertized onk /. but I guess not until this morning. But the videos are pretty sweet, go watch them!
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The reason you have to wear them, is that Mercury emits certain poisonous gases which traverse through the earth's atmosphere and might be dangerous. This can lead to loss of eyesight, decrease and breathing capacity and irritablity.
The poisonous gas is probably vaporized mercury, so you'll probably get heavy metal poisoning.
Wait a sec? Jupiter only has one moon?!? I guess it must've eaten the other 59 moons. Was it Io? Lousy fuck. Or maybe Ganymede? I bet it was Europa.. or maybe Callisto. I doubt it was Metis or Adrastea. Thebe's too weak to do anything like that. Maybe it was Themisto, I always knew he had it out for Leda, Himalia, Lysithea, and Elara. S/2000 is just strange. Iocaste might do something like that, if someone suicidal like Praxidike or Harpalke decided they were sick of looking at the likes of Ananke, Isonoe, Erinome, or Taygete. Wait.. no, I know, it was probably Chaldene, working together with Carme and Pasiphae. They've always hated the likes of Kalyke, Megaclite, Sinope, and Callirrhoe. Could it possibly have been those piece of shit S/2001's. Maybe they had a gang war with the S/2003's. NO! I'VE GOT IT! It was that worthless no good S/2002 asshole who dunnit. Those small fucks always have short fuses....
What was I talking about?
I was wondering that myself. That is after I realized that the article wasn't about transporting old mercury thermometers to the hazardous waste disposal site.
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Here's another reason why it's rarer than you'd first assume:
Mercury orbit: 88 days.
Earth orbit: 365 days.
Mercury is 4.14772 times faster than Earth. However, that doesn't mean that it's passes Earth 4.14772 times in an Earth year.
Instead of working out the math using these two rates, think of a 12 hour span and a truely analog clock. The minute and hour hands overlap at the following specific times:
t=12:00 exactly (first pass)
t=between 1:05 and 1:06 (second pass)
t=between 2:10 and 2:11 (third pass)
t=between 3:16 and 3:17 (fourth pass)
t=between 4:21 and 4:22 (fifth pass)
t=between 5:27 and 5:28 (sixth pass)
t=between 6:32 and 6:33 (seventh pass)
t=between 7:38 and 7:39 (eighth pass)
t=between 8:43 and 8:44 (ninth pass)
t=between 9:49 and 9:50 (tenth pass)
t=between 10:54 and 10:55 (eleventh pass)
t=between 11:59 and 12:00 (twelvth pass)
But, the twelvth pass is not technically correct, since it really is 12:00 or the first pass. Even if it were, then the twelvth and first pass would occur in the same "pass".
Therefore, in a 12 hour span (on average), the minute hand passes the hour hand 11 times, even though it's 12 times faster (12 revolutions of the minute hand for 1 revolution of the hour hand). It's a tricky question that I haven't heard in a very very very long time.
This issue would only account for about 1/4 of the "missing" Mercury passes, but that's a big amount of error anyway. When you look at the missing Venus passes, since the orbits are much closer in time, the assumption error (described above) is significantly larger.
This is aside from any other mis-alignment factors such as planetary inclinations.
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Damn it. Forgot the Preview feature... That'll teach me.
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For those of you who are interested, Celestia is an Open Source application that can simulate the movements of the planets in 3d and generate some really cool pictures. It's available for Linux, Win32, and MacOSX.
One particularly good gallery is the Celestial Phenomina one by "Calculus." An example of a cool image is Saturn transit of the Sun as seen from Uranus in 2669.
- AlanH
I think using binoculars to project an image onto a piece of paper gives a better picture than a pinhole camera, but it is the same idea.
Projected images are so much safer than looking through anything, plus more than one person can look at a projected image at the same time.
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Just junk food for thought...
There's a little black spot on the sun today.... :)
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