Transit of Mercury

JoeP · #1 05-09-2016, 10:37 AM

Anyone going to watch?

Starts in less than 2 hours. Last one was in 2006, next one in 2019 (unless we've dismantled it by then to build a Dyson sphere).

Unless you already have a telescope with a strong filter, plz watch online. Some of the following might work:

Angakuk · #2 05-09-2016, 10:52 PM

No risk here. Can't even see the sun today.

JoeP · #3 05-09-2016, 11:08 PM

It was in any case phenomenally exciting. Something happens at precise times - known to within a few seconds years in advance - and following a precise path. And lots of people can't see it due to cloud.

ceptimus · #4 05-09-2016, 11:41 PM

It was a matter of life and death for ancient people to be able to predict the weather, but they couldn't.

What did show some regularity was the movement of the sun, the moon, and a few dots of light in the night sky. So although it was of no real use, and certainly much less useful than predicting the movement of clouds, people put an enormous amount of thought and work into understanding the movement of those dots - to the point where they could predict their future movement with unbelievable accuracy.

And this was, arguably, the birth of science so it did turn out to be really useful after all.

And today we can predict the transit down to the millisecond, but we still can't predict the weather accurately enough to know whether or not we'll be able to observe the event.

I sometimes wonder if the planets had been a bit dimmer, so they couldn't be seen by the naked human eye, if civilisation would ever have gotten started.