From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Mon May 05 2003 - 04:24:09 MDT
More about the Mercury transit coming up.
Date: Fri, 02 May 2003 15:09:50 +0200
From: esonews@eso.org
Subject: A Solar Mini-Eclipse on May 7, 2003 (ESO Press Release 10/03)
Dear subscribers,
as you will undoubtedly be aware, a rare Mercury Transit across the
solar disk will be visible next Wednesday, May 7, 2003.
Together with several partner organisations and institutes, ESO has set
up a website with useful information related to this event, from where
it will also be possible to see (near-)real-time images obtained with
professional telescopes.
Read more about all of this in today's press release, now available at:
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2003/pr-10-03.html
Kind regards,
The ESO EPR Dept.
-------
Information from the European Southern Observatory
ESO Press Release 10/03
2 May 2003 [ESO Logo]
For immediate release
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Solar Mini-Eclipse on May 7, 2003
Planet Mercury Passes in Front of the Solar Disk
A solar mini-eclipse! On May 7, 2003, Mercury, the innermost planet in
the solar system, willpass in front of the Sun and produce a solar
eclipse. But this event will hardly be noticed. Mercury's small disk
will indeed barely be bigger than the point of a pencil. Even the
smallest sunspots on the solar surface are as big as the Earth and
measure 10,000 km or more in diameter, while Mercury's equatorial
diameter is only 4878 km.
Bathed in intense sunlight, this small, hot planet moves around the
Sun in an elliptical orbit at a mean distance of only 58 million km,
much closer to the Sun than other inner planet, Venus (108 million km)
and the Earth (150 million km).
The disk of Mercury is very small and will be very difficult to see. A
powerful telescope is needed to observe this event and to show clearly
how Mercury moves across the solar disk. The disk of Mercury is indeed
only 13 arcseconds across (while the solar disk measures about 1800
arcseconds). This corresponds to the size of a 1 EURO coin located at
the top of the Eiffel Tower as seen from the ground. Therefore,
Mercury will only block 1/20,000th of the Sun's light.
Mercury Transits
Passages of Mercury in front of the Sun, or "Mercury Transits" in
astronomical terminology, are comparatively rare events, due to the
different orbital inclinations of the Earth and Mercury as they move
around the Sun.
In order for a Mercury transit to happen, the planet must be located
directly between the Earth and the Sun and also near one of the two
points in its orbit where Mercury's orbital plane intersects that of
the Earth. We then face the dark side of Mercury - the hemisphere that
is not illuminated by the Sun - and see it as a small dark spot moving
across the bright solar disk.
There are about 13 Mercury transits each century and they follow in
time intervals of approximately 13, 7, 10 and 3 years. The most recent
one took place in November 1999 and the next will be on May 7, 2003
and November 8, 2006.
The next Mercury transit happens on Wednesday morning next week. It
lasts from about 7:13 hrs CEST (Central European Summer Time) until
12:32 hrs CEST (5:13 to 10:32 UT) and the contour of the small planet
as it moves across the solar disk can be seen from all places where
the Sun is above the horizon and the sky is clear. The best observing
conditions are from Europe, Africa and Asia.
Observations of the transit
Note, however, that this event cannot be observed with the unaided eye
- this would also be extremely dangerous because the enormous
brightness of the Sun will cause total blindness in a fraction of a
second!
Observations can only be made by means of telescopes which project the
solar image onto a white screen.
Public observatories, planetaria and other educational institutions
will arrange special events on this occasion. News about such
arrangements will appear in the local press.
Live images on the web
On this special occasion and in order to provide for everybody the
chance to watch this event, the European Southern Observatory (ESO)
and the European Association for Astronomy Education (EAAE), together
with the Institut de Mecanique Celeste et de Calcul des Ephemerides
(IMCCE) and the Observatoire de Paris in France, are providing live
images and a running commentary for all interested parties. It is also
planned to display images obtained at observatories in the Belgium,
the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy and Spain, and possibly others. The
availability will depend on the weather situation in the various
places.
Full information and many weblinks to other educational sites are
available via the special website at:
http://www.eso.org/outreach/eduoff/vt-2004/mt-2003/mt-intro.html
On this site, extensive background information about Mercury and the
Sun can be found and, in particular, useful sheets for school students
and teachers in many languages. Live images from professional
telescopes (depending on the weather at the observing sites) will be
available on the special webpage:
http://www.eso.org/outreach/eduoff/vt-2004/mt-2003/mt-display.html
and it will also be possible to ask questions in "real-time" to
astronomers via this page.
Venus Transit on June 8, 2004
The Mercury Transit of May 7 is also a kind of "general rehearsal" to
the even rarer Venus Transit event on June 8, 2004. The last such
event took place in 1884, so that no living person has ever seen
one. The above mentioned organisations are also preparing for a major
public event on that occasion. Provisional information is already
available at the VT-2004 website.
Contacts
Bernhard Mackowiak
ESO EPR Dept.
Garching bei Muenchen, Germany
Tel: +49-89-3200-6322
email: bmackovi@eso.org
Jean-Eudes Arlot
IMCCE
Paris, France
Tel: +33-1-40512267
email: arlot@imcce.fr
-- Amara Graps, PhD Istituto di Fisica delle Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI) Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Roma, ITALIA Amara.Graps@ifsi.rm.cnr.it
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