Choose an Observing Location In eastern North and South America the Sun will set before the transit is over, so it’simportant to observe from a site with a good western horizon. Map shows where on Earth the Mercury Transit will be visible and not visible. The same thing can be worked out from a transit of Mercury. Mercury’s orbit is inclined seven degrees to the ecliptic, or plane of Earth’s orbit, as Bob King of Sky and Telescope explains. The Mercury transit is not visible from Europe,Africa, and most of Asia. The method uses data gathered by observations of transits of Venus in the 18th century to determine (with the help of some trigonometry) the distance between Earth and sun. They hope to re-create a method Sir Edmund Halley (of comet fame) used to determine the Earth-sun distance. Meanwhile, more than a dozen observing sites will be set up by the Citizen Transit of Mercury (ToM) Project, made up mostly of students. At least one of these, the space-based Solar Dynamics Observatory, won't have to worry about the possibility of clouds. If you can't get to the observatory, Lowell is one of many observatories that will be livestreaming the transit. Mercurys Transit in Progress: Mercury is the tiny dot at the lower-left. "So what we're going to do is start at 7 o'clock." Whatever puts you under a clear starry sky, look up and enjoy our wonderful. And so, you know, the first hour and 25 minutes or so will miss," he says. "In Flagstaff, the transit starts at 5:35," says Kevin Schindler, a spokesman for the observatory. The observatory - made famous by Percival Lowell and his fanciful observations of the red planet and what he believed were canals built by Martians - has a new observing plaza with six telescopes, several of which will be equipped with solar filters for the public to view the transit. During November transits, Mercury is near perihelion and therefore farther from the Earth, the reason for its smaller apparent size of 10 compared to 12 for. Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., is one such place. Dozens of local astronomy clubs will be hosting events and if you're lucky enough to have a public observatory nearby, there's a good chance it will have telescopes set up for viewing.
You won't necessarily need your own telescope to view the transit.
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