First, a recap on the transit of Mercury across the Sun’s face between sunrise and noon on May 9th.
Although the forecast was for generally clear skies until 1pm, I have a well established reputation for making clouds appear out of nowhere. With expectations not particularly high, I went out to my garage the night before and fitted my telescope with a proper solar filter just in case, then went to bed reasonably early, mornings not being my strong suit.
Totally unexpectedly, through some mix up at Weather Central, the Sun rose the next morning against a clear blue sky. By 7am-ish, when the Sun had risen high enough to clear my neighbours’ house, I yawned my way outside, opened my garage door and aligned my scope on the Sun.
There it was, about a third of the way in from the Sun’s edge: Mercury. Well, I assumed it was Mercury. All you can really see when a planet (or our moon) crosses the Sun is a black circle. The planet was not the only feature you could see; in the centre of the Sun’s disk was a pair of sunspots, and a little further away, a large cluster.
Mercury’s the nearest planet to the Sun, the smallest at less than half Earth’s size, and the fastest, orbiting at 49km per second compared to Earth’s 30. It also has the shortest year at 88 days. Small and speedy.
Over the next few hours, we took turns occasionally checking Mercury’s progress through the eyepiece while munching on toast and coffee, the ‘we’ including my neighbours, a few friends, random passers-by, and of course the kids next door before they left for school. At 12:40, it was down to a friend and I watching as Mercury slipped off the edge of the Sun and disappeared.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the Yorkton area was among the few places in the province that wasn’t clouded over and thus able to see the transit. The next one: November 11th, 2019, coincidentally on a Monday from sunrise to noon. What are the chances I won’t be clouded over twice in a row?
Anyway, in other news, the Full Moon this Saturday will be the smallest Full Moon of 2016. Just like the sizes of the ‘Supermoons’ of recent months were overstated, this moon will not be ‘smaller’ enough to notice either.
Of more interest is that the Moon on the 21st rises at sunset accompanied by Mars and Saturn. Combined with Jupiter high in the south and more cameos by Venus & Mercury in July, this is just the beginning of some great planetary viewing. At one time or another this summer, each of the nine classic planets will be available in the evening sky, some easy, some not so much, but all available from your own back yard.
