Mercury will traverse the sun’s disc in the afternoon of 9 May and will be visible from India after a gap of nearly ten years.
The phenomenon as viewed from the earth will be seen as a small black dot travelling from one end of the solar disc to the other.
This phenomenon will be visible because all three celestial bodies will fall in straight line.
According to researchers in Positional Astronomy Center in Kolkata, Mercury appears as a dot on the sun’s facade because its angular size is very small compared to that of the sun as seen from earth.
Image courtesy: NASA.gov
Mercury’s journey across the solar disc will be visible from most parts of the Asian continent (except the south eastern parts and Japan), Europe, Africa, Greenland, South America, North America, Arctic, North Atlantic Ocean and most of the Pacific Ocean.
“The transit will be visible in India after ten years and the next it will be visible in the country after a long gap of 16 years in 2032,” Sanjib Sen, director at the Positional Astronomy Centre, was quoted by the Times of India.
Mercury’s transit is relatively a rare phenomenon and occurs 13 or 14 times in a century, mostly in the months of May and November.
