Video: MHS student Victoria Kapp captures Mercury transit
By Anthony Danese
On Monday, May 9, 2016, the planet Mercury passed in front of the sun from the vantage point of Earth. This event, known as the “transit of Mercury,” is a relatively rare event occurring approximately 13 times per century.
Smartphone photo by MHS student Mairen Flanagan.
Fortunately, the timing happened to be just right for a few dozen Morristown High School students in Anthony Danese’s physics and astronomy classes.
Using telescopes specifically made to safely view the sun, the students tracked the motion of Mercury, which appeared as a small black dot, as it crawled across the disk of the sun.
Planetary transits are important scientific phenomena. Centuries ago, the great English astronomer Edmond Halley realized that observations of the transit of Mercury could be used to calculate the distance from the Earth to the sun.
Astronomers currently are searching for planets outside of our solar system, so-called exoplanets, by monitoring the light from their host star which shows characteristic dips in light intensity when there is a planetary transit.
The next transit of Mercury will occur on Nov. 11, 2019 and we hope it will be a sunny day!
Anthony Danese teaches physics and astronomy at Morristown High.
EC, you’ll have to come back on Nov. 11, 2019.
How come I’m not in the pictures?