Hello, Mercury!

Ahoy Landlubbers!

Today was 9 May 2016, the day when a rare astronomical event took place. Today, there was a Transit of Mercury, and was visible in India during sunset.

A transit is a phenomenon when a celestial object comes in between the Sun and the Earth, and appears to traverse across the face of the Sun. Solar eclipses are therefore, also transits, but since transits do not cover the entire sun, eclipses are excluded from this classification. From that definition, its easy to understand that a transit of Mercury is the planet Mercury traversing the face of the Sun.

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun in our Solar System. It is also the smallest of the 8 main planets, and revolves around the Sun in 88 days. Having no atmosphere, and being so close to the sun, Mercury’s temperatures range between 430 degrees celsius during daytime and -170 degrees celsius during the night. The humankind has sent two spacecrafts till date to Mercury.

Mercury and Venus are the only planets to have a transit visible from the Earth, since they’re the only planets having their orbits completely within the Earth’s orbit. Although Venus’ transit is super rare - twice every 243 years, Mercury’s transit is relatively frequent - about 14 in every century.

After today, Mercury will have one more transit in 2019, which will not be visible in India. The transit after that will be in the year 2032, which will be visible in India for its entire duration. I was determined to witness and photograph this event and had been prepared to document for a while, since I had missed both the transits of Venus in 2004 and 2012. Nothing could stop me this time!

But Houston, we’ve had a problem. Thunderstorms formed towards the evening, like they always do whenever there is an astronomical event to hamper the show. Any relation is yet hypothetical. I can thank my lucky stars that I was able to glance upon the Sun for a few minutes and take a photograph of the event. The photograph was a bit smudged since I used a makeshift filter to reduce the brightness of the sun, even though it was sunset since Mercury is too small to be visible directly. Below is the photograph.

Enjoy the view of Mercury, and share the post if you felt it was awesome.

Until next time!