Mercury transit observed at the Hvar Observatory, 09.05.2016

Written by Jaša Čalogović Tuesday, 10 May 2016 00:00

thumb OH HA mercury transit 20160509 113034The transits of Mercury across the solar disk are rare phenomena, although Mercury orbits the Sun in just 88 days. The reason for this is that Mercury orbits the Sun with the certain angle to the ecliptic, ie. the plane that the Earth orbits the Sun. Mercury transit in Croatia was visible on 9 May 2016, started at 13:12h local time and could be seen for almost 7 hours. Unfortunately, end of transit was not visible from our region because the sunset was at 20:10h and end of transit was at 20:42h. This rare phenomena was possible to observe from Hvar, and it was recoreded in white light and H-alpha using Hvar solar telescope. The next transit of Mercury will be visible from the Croatia in 2019.





White light
thumb OH WL mercury transit 20160509 111528 thumb OH WL mercury transit 20160509 112534 thumb OH WL mercury transit 20160509 120230
 
H-alpha
thumb OH HA mercury transit 20160509 111408 thumb OH HA mercury transit 20160509 113034 thumb OH HA mercury transit 20160509 120342
 
Movie of white light observations
Movie of H-alpha observations

Article on T-portal about transit of Mercury (in croatian)