India witnesses rare Mercury’s transit across the sun

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The phenomenon is a relatively rare one which occurs 13 or 14 times in a century. It occurs in May and November. The interval between one November transit and next November transit may be 7, 13 or 33 years whereas the interval between one May transit and the next May transit may be 13 or 33 years.

There were also a warning issued not to view the phenomenon with a naked eye.

“In Delhi, we had also created a dark room in which the an enlarged Sun was viewed on a projector. More than a thousand people attended the session,” Rathnasree said.

In all the four metropolitans, the event started at 4.41 PM.

In Kolkata, despite a partially overcast sky, enthusiasts today viewed the passage of the mercury across the sun. “The size of mercury being very small in comparison to the sun, it appeared just like a dot on the solar disc,” Director of Positional Astronomy Centre (PAC) Sanjib Sen said.

The transit of Mercury was visible from most parts of of Asia (except south eastern parts and Japan), Europe, Africa, Greenland, South America, North America, Arctic, North Atlantic Ocean and much of the Pacific Ocean area.

The entire transit, from beginning to end, was visible from eastern North America, northern South America, the Arctic, Greenland, extreme northwestern Africa, western Europe, and the North Atlantic Ocean.

The last transit of Mercury had occurred on November 6, 2006 when just the end of the event was visible from the extreme north-eastern parts of India at sunrise.

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