{"id":713,"date":"2006-11-08T05:34:25","date_gmt":"2006-11-08T13:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/?p=713"},"modified":"2006-11-08T14:21:36","modified_gmt":"2006-11-08T22:21:36","slug":"mercury-to-transit-the-sun-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/2006\/11\/08\/mercury-to-transit-the-sun-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercury to Transit the Sun Today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>UPDATE 2<\/strong>: A Segment of a heliograph taken in Hawaii shows a tiny dot near the center. The dark spot on the left is a sunspot that is rotating towards Earth.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-images\/0611\/merctrans.jpg\" class=\"centered\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>UPDATE<\/strong>: Astronomy Picture of the Day shows just how <a href=\"http:\/\/antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov\/apod\/ap061108.html\">unspectacular<\/a> the transit will appear.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-images\/0611\/mercury.jpg\" class=\"left\" \/>Don&#8217;t get your hopes up for a spectacular view of this event. Even with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rainbowsymphony.com\/soleclipse.html\">eclipse glasses<\/a>, mercury&#8217;s image will appear to be so very tiny compared to the solar disk.<\/p>\n<p><em>Left: A prior Mercury transit as observed by <a href=\"http:\/\/sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov\/\">SOHO<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>If you have a pair of binoculars available, you might try and project the sun&#8217;s image onto a flat, shaded surface. Point the objective lens (the end you don&#8217;t look through) toward the sun and try to focus the solar disk onto the flat surface. <b>DO NOT LOOK AT THE SUN THROUGH THE BINOCULARS!<\/b><\/p>\n<p>If you plan to try and observe the event, for God&#8217;s sake, do not look at the sun without the proper solar filters &#8212; instant damage can be done to your eyes.<\/p>\n<p>From <strong>NASA<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/headlines\/y2006\/20oct_transitofmercury.htm\">NASA &#8211; 2006 Transit of Mercury<\/a><\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, Nov 8th, the planet Mercury will pass directly in front the Sun. The transit begins at 2:12 pm EST (11:12 am PST) and lasts for almost five hours. Good views can be had from the Americas, Hawaii, Australia and all along the Pacific Rim.<\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"http:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/headlines\/y2006\/20oct_transitofmercury.htm\">Read more<\/a>]\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UPDATE 2: A Segment of a heliograph taken in Hawaii shows a tiny dot near the center. The dark spot on the left is a sunspot&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-rocket-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}