Did you point your telescope at the sun in time to catch Mercury making its 12-year pass on Monday? If so, hopefully you had a sun filter. Some folks got a free chance to look at it right from the streets of downtown.
“And when you look through there you will see the disk of the sun and Mercury, right now, is currently in the lower-left-hand portion of the disk, it’s a tiny, little, black dot.”
That’s Jeff Kozarski with the Chaffee Planetarium. He called me over when he saw me checking out the telescope he set up pointing dead into the sun in the middle of a bright, cloudless day.
I look and sure enough, there’s the tiny disk on the lower left side.
“There is a fairly large sun spot in the center of the sun which is much larger than the planet itself.”
And as if it’s not rare enough to stand on the curb at Mt. Vernon Avenue while looking at the sun, being able to spy Mercury in between is even less common.
“Yes, they occur on average every twelve years or so”
But don’t lose heart if you think you’ll forget by 2028. Mercury makes its runs in pairs. So mark your calendar now.
“There will be another one that will occur in November of 2019. Three years.”
