Mini Mercury skips across sun's vast glare in rare transit

The planet Mercury appears as a tiny dust speck on the face of the Sun behind the Washington Monument. Mercury's last transit was in 2016. Photo / Nasa

Mini Mercury skipped across the vast, glaring face of the sun Monday in a rare celestial transit.

Stargazers used solar-filtered binoculars and telescopes to spot Mercury — a tiny black dot — as it passed directly between Earth and the sun on Monday.

The eastern US and Canada got the whole 5 ½-hour show, weather permitting, along with Central and South America. The rest of the world, except for Asia and Australia, got just a sampling.

That's all, folks! Mercury has left the disk of the Sun, completing the transit. The next Mercury transit is in 2032 — so in the meantime, you can read up on @NASAUniverse's TESS mission, which uses transits in other star systems to look for exoplanets! https://t.co/2NlnHKzBFn pic.twitter.com/zRLdYnHiaz

— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) November 11, 2019

Mercury is the solar system's smallest, innermost planet. The next transit isn't until 2032, and North America won't get another shot until 2049.

In Maryland, clouds prevented Nasa solar astrophysicist Alex Young from getting a clear peek. Live coverage was provided by observatories including Nasa's orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory.

"It's a bummer, but the whole event was still great," Young wrote in an email. "Both getting to see it from space and sharing it with people all over the country and world."

At Cape Canaveral, space buffs got a two-for-one. As Mercury's silhouette graced the morning sun, SpaceX launched 60 small satellites for global internet service, part of the company's growing Starlink constellation in orbit.

- AP