Mercury Transit on May 7, 2003

Central Display and Webcam...

We are online with you during the entire event

DO NOT FORGET THAT IT IS DANGEROUS TO OBSERVE THE SUN WITHOUT SPECIAL PROTECTION! The only completely safe way is to project an image of the sun on a white surface (for instance, a piece of paper or cardboard).

Latest Information (May 7, 11:48 hrs CEST -- 09:48 hrs UT)

Less than 1 hour to go before the end of the transit. Stay tuned ! Images from the telescope at ESO and other places are now coming at a regular rate. The one from ESO may be seen via the webcam Mercury is the upper right one, closer to the limb of the solar disk. It appears sharper than the lower one which is a small sunspot group. Please note that the solar image is reversed by the telescope optics - this is why Mercury is moving from right to left in these images. Note also that the webcam image is rotating so as to have both Mercury and the sunspots in the image. This makes it difficult to appreciate the motion of the planet. See however this image to be convinced of the contrary. The images are updated every 1 minute in principle.

Sun

The sun seen with the finder of the 1-m Solar Telescope of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, located at La Palma. Mercury is the black dot at the right.

previous images... 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12


Recent Images

Here is a collection of recent images obtained in different places.


Composite of images taken by the GONG Network from India at 9:32 UT.

Image taken by F. Delplancke at Garching with a C8 telescope.

Image taken at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

Image from the Deep Sky Widefield applications in Sonderborg (Denmark)