![]() On Monday, Citizen ToM will replicate Halley's experiment, using Mercury instead of Venus. In 1769, more than 25 years after Halley's death, astronomers were finally able to use a Venus transit to make the first calculations about the Earth-sun distance and the resulting size of the solar system. By comparing how the planet shifted with the distance between the two observation points, observers could calculate the distance to the sun. It wasn't until Sir Edmund Halley, of cometary fame, realized that Venus could play a role that the problem became solvable.Īfter observing a transit of Mercury, Halley realized that a planet would appear in different positions at the same time to observers at different locations on the Earth. Students will use equipment from a similar project conducted during the 2017 total solar eclipse, called Citizen CATE, to measure when the planet crosses each point of contact.įor centuries, astronomers struggled to put the solar system in proper perspective, stymied by their inability to measure the distance between Earth and the sun. (The first contact occurs at the moment when Mercury's silhouette touches the sun's disk for the first time, marking the beginning of the transit, and the fourth contact is when Mercury has completely moved off of the sun's disk.)Īccording to Sky & Telescope, the Citizen Transit of Mercury (ToM) project will attempt to measure the distance between Earth and the sun during Monday's transit. These events are usually referred to as contacts, with the planet being fully in front of the solar disk during the second and third contact. One of the most common transit observations is to measure when each side of Mercury comes in contact with the solar limb. The tiny planet will transit next in 20, but the sun will be on the horizon for North American observers, making this year's the last one visible for the continent until May 2049. ![]() "You can make more precise measurements in May." "During May transits, Mercury's closer to us, so it appears larger than in November," David Rothery, a planetary geoscientist at Open University in the United Kingdom, previously told. ![]()
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