The transition will begin at 21:12 Israel time and will last almost 4 hours.
Write in your diary - on Wednesday, November 8, the planet Mercury will pass in front of the Sun. The transition will start at 21:12 Israel time and will last almost 4 hours. Good observation of the passage is expected in North and South America, Hawaii, Australia and along the Pacific Ocean basin. Viewers in Europe, Africa and most of Asia will miss the event and will have to watch it via the Internet.
Image credit: Larry Cohen
During the transit, the small disk of the planet Hema - a perfect circle in black color - will float slowly across the surface of the Sun. Only some of the sun's surface will be covered, so the sun will remain dangerous to view without special equipment. However, with appropriate filters and a little imagination, transiting the planet Mercury can be an experience.
It is recommended to use eclipse glasses or the projection of the image of the sun. The best is a telescope equipped with an H-alpha filter. This filter is specially tuned for the red color of the hydrogen emitted from the sun. They reveal where the sun's boiling interior is, dotted with magnetic storms and sunspots.
NASA especially recommends the SOHO spacecraft site.
It turns out that we know less than half of the surface of the planet Mercury. When the Mariner 10 spacecraft passed by it in the mid-seventies, it was only able to photograph 45% of the cratered surface. What happens on the other side is still open to speculation, because the next spacecraft to attack Mercury - NASA's Mercury Messenger - will not enter orbit around it before 2011.
One of the great secrets of the planet Mercury is the mysterious substance at its poles. Radars on Earth sent signals to the planet Mercury and received a strange echo from the polar craters. A particularly common explanation is that it is ice.
While in daylight the surface temperature on Mercury reaches 400 degrees Celsius, the temperature in these deep craters can only reach minus 200 degrees Celsius. If an icy comet lands in one of these craters (or even causes them to form), the ice in the comet that evaporates due to the impact may refreeze and stick to the ground. This is just one of the theories Messenger will have to test.
Another puzzle is a geological puzzle. Geologists call them the Onthean slopes. They look like wrinkles on a raisin. These scratches are considered shrinkage. It's possible that Mercury is collapsing in on itself as its iron core cools and contracts.
To test the idea, the Messenger spacecraft will map the magnetic field of the planet Hema, erupting from the core. If the core shrinks, the kinking may leave marks in the planet's magnetism. MESSENGER will also look for these cracks in the unmapped region of Mercury to see if this is indeed a global phenomenon.
For information on the NASA website
