transit of mercury live
German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was the first person to predict a Mercury transit event, although he did not observe one himself. His prediction of a transit on November 7th 1631 enabled the French mathematician and astronomer Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) to observe it, in the year following Kepler's death.
On November 11th 2019 a transit of Mercury across the face of the Sun takes place. Mercury transits occur thirteen or fourteen times per century and they can be observed from much of the world, however since they involve viewing the Sun Slooh will train its highly specialized Solar Telescope, based at its flagship observatory at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, on the tiny planet Mercury as it crosses the face of the Sun. |
Live stream of the event starts around 7:30 AM ET. ( Monday, Nov 11th )
Join Slooh host, Paul Cox and Slooh's experts Bob Berman, Dr Mike Shaw, and special guests who will tell us everything there is to know about Mercury, the Sun, and planetary transits. The team will be discussing the phenomena as viewers snap their own images from the live streams. They will also discuss the importance of planetary transits in history and why major expeditions to view them were organized at great expense during the 1700s. Viewers can interact with the team using Slooh's chat facility when watching at slooh.com |