(Venus Transit of 2012)

Starting at about 4AM (U.S. west coast time), the planet Mercury will cross the face of the Sun.  I’ve never photographed a Mercury transit before, but captured the above Venus transit back in 2012.  Mercury has such transits much more frequently than Venus, but it also appears as a smaller disk.

If you’re not interested enough to get up at 4AM, don’t worry, the transit doesn’t end until 11:39AM.  However, you do have to worry about safety in observing the transit.  Unlike a solar eclipse, the Sun will appear at full brightness and you wouldn’t be able to see Mercury even if it was safe to look at the Sun directly.  For some tips on safe solar observing, click here: http://www.space.com/15614-sun-observing-safety-tips-infographic.html

Because of the small size of Mercury’s disc against the Sun, it may be difficult to see with these techniques.  Binoculars or a small telescope with a suitable solar safety filter is more certain to yield a view of the small planet.  Or you can just watch it online: https://main.slooh.com/event/transit-of-mercury/ (There are undoubtedly other sites that will be showing it as well – Google it!)

I’m hoping to photograph at least part of the transit, but it will be difficult if I stay up late the night before working on images of more distant stars!  And, of course, the first part of the transit happens before sunrise out here.  People on the U.S. east coast, most of South America, and the western parts of Europe and Africa can see the whole thing.  Only a few places in the world won’t get to see any of it, but that includes Australia and Japan, unfortunately.