A transit of Mercury will occur TODAY – 11th November 2019. This is a relatively a rare event: the last took place 9th May 2016 and you’ll have to wait until 2032 to see the next one.
How to view the transit
There are plenty of ways to safely view the transit, both online and through public events with solar telescopes. You can find details of live webcasts at Space.com.
Get involved
We’d like to see your pictures of the transit and of you or your friends viewing the event. Tweet your selfies using the hashtag #MercuryTransitSelfie
Share Europlanet’s video about the transit:
The video can be downloaded in various resolutions here: https://vimeo.com/161921266
Where is it visible?
Timeanddate.com has produced this animation to show when and where the transit of Mercury will be visible:
What’s it all about?
Read more:
Mercury is a fascinating planet and the target of the European Space Agency’s mission, BepiColombo, which launched in October 2018 and will arrive at Mercury on 5th December 2025. In the run-up to the last transit of Mercury in 2016, we invited European scientists that study the innermost planet or whose research relates to transits to contribute guest features about their work and to participate in a series of webinars.
- Mercury: the planet, the missions and the transit – by Prof Dave Rothery
- The Venus Twilight Experiment: What we learned from the last transit of Venus by Dr Paolo Tanga
Watch:
- Europlanet Mercury Live Hangout Part 1 – (recorded on Tuesday, 12 April 2016)
- Europlanet Mercury Live Hangout Part 2 – (recorded on Tuesday, 19 April 2016
- Europlanet Mercury Live Hangout Part 3 – (recorded on Tuesday, 20 May 2016)
Links
Society for Popular Astronomy – Transit of Mercury 2019:
BepiColombo:
https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/bepicolombo
Open University – Discover Mercury:
https://www.open.edu/openlearn/exploremercury
Observatoire de Paris – Le passage de Mercure (from 2016):
https://transitmercure.obspm.fr