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Mercury Transit November 8, 2006 When Worlds Align Michael Portuesi & Ken Frank· San Francisco Amateur Astronomers San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers The Sun is our Closest Star ● ● The Sun is 93 million miles away from Earth. If you could drive a car to the Sun, it would take 163 years to get there! Other Stars are Very Far Away If the Sun and Earth were only an inch apart, the nearest star would still be over four miles away…about as far from here to the beach! Sun Earth Other Stars One inch apart Over 4 miles to drive! The Sun is Very Big ● 109 Earths will fit across the Sun's surface ● Over 1 million Earths will fit inside the Sun The Sun is Bright and Hot SOHO (ESA & NASA) - http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/ Surface of Sun: 10,000 degrees Center of Sun: 27 million degrees Solar Corona at Eclipse – Paul Mortfield – http://www.backyardastronomer.com Sun's Corona: 2 million degrees! What is a Planet? What’s the problem with Pluto? Pluto is now known as a “dwarf planet” The new definition of planet: 1 Round (not potato-shaped) 2 Orbits the Sun 3 Doesn't “share its lane” with other objects (planets, asteroids, etc) ● New mnemonic: Mother Very Easily Makes Cucumber-Jalapeno Sandwiches Using No Pleasant Condiments Usually Mercury 101 Mercury can be seen as a morning or evening star Mercury is a small, rocky planet, much like our Moon It is covered with craters…lots more than the Moon Distance from Sun = 28,580,000 to 43,380,000 miles Distance from Earth = 48,000,000 miles (closest approach) Orbital Period = 87.97 Earth days Length of day = 176 Earth days Atmosphere = none Magnetosphere = yes (weak) Moons = none In and Out/McDonalds = none Mercury rotates slooowly Solar System: Wed 2006 Nov 8 19:12 UT Orbit of Earth & Mercury 16 Mercury Orbit Earth Orbit Ascending Node Descending Node Line of Nodes Mercury Orbit Inclination = 7.0° Orbit Eccentricity = 0.21 Distance = 0.31 - 0.47 AU Fred Espenak, NASA’s GSFC 2006 Transit of Mercury - 21 A 23 year old Parisian, Charles Messier observed the 1753 transitIt was his first recorded observation! The Mercury Transit Where can you see it? Solar Eclipse, seen from the Mir Space Station, 1999 Solar Eclipses Sunspots & Mercury ● ● ● Sunspots are large storms on the Sun's surface They look small, but are bigger than the Earth! Mercury will look even smaller They move as the Sun rotates, in 27 days Mercury Transit May 7, 2003 SOHO (ESA & NASA) - http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/ Fe IX/X line, 171 Fe XII line, 195 Fe XV line, 284 He II line, 304 The false-color TRACE images were made in ultraviolet light and show the hot gas just above the Sun's visible surface View the Sun Safely! So we can all easily see the Transit, please don’t touch the telescopes. When viewing the Sun use only safe filters. Never look directly at the Sun To find out more interesting stuff Join the Membership benefits include: Star parties X 3/month Mt. Tam, Fremont Peak, Yosemite trips and more Thanks ● ● ● Johannes Schedler www.panther-observatory.com Paul Mortfield www.backyardastronomer.com SOHO http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/ ● Fred Espenak http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse ● Thierry Legault http://www.astrosurf.com/legault ● ● ● Transition Region and Coronal Explorer http://trace.lmsal.com/ Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford Astronomical Society of the Pacific http://www.astrosociety.org/index.html Copyright Copyright © 2006 Michael Portuesi & Kenneth Frank. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons AttributionNoDerivs-NonCommercial License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305 Credits ● ● Photos are owned by and copyright the original photographers as listed. They are used here with permisssion, and licensed under the same terms. SOHO images are courtesy of SOHO/EIT consortium. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.