Mercury Transit 2016 at Planetarium Science Centre, Ghana

• Print
• Email

May 13

2016

by Sarah Abotsi-Masters

We held a Transit of Mercury viewing session using a Solarscope (simple projection device).  We were lucky with clear skies all day, and despite our “low-tech” equipment, could make out a large irregularly-shaped sunspot, and the planet Mercury, clearly much darker and with a more definite circular shape compared to the sunspot. 

We had planned to use mirror projection as another way to view the transit (we had used this very successfully during the partial eclipse of November 2013) but on this occasion it was difficult to get a large enough and clear enough image.  The light winds also made it difficult to keep the image stable.

We didn’t expect large numbers, it being a Monday during the day, but around 20 visitors came to see the Transit, mainly families with children after school hours, who all really enjoyed seeing the tiny planet!