Earth, Mercury and the Sun form a straight line

People gather at the UAE Space Agency in Abu Dhabi to watch the transit of mercury across the sun.

On Monday, the UAE witnessed Mercury transit the Sun for the first time in 10 years. The rare event took place from 3.11pm until 10.42pm. Space experts as well as those who were lucky enough, were able to see the passage of the planet across the Sun through special telescopes set up in the Capital.
Khalfan Al Remeiethi Space Technology Engineer at UAE Space Agency, spoke to Khaleej Times, about the significance of this rare event.
"This event is critical because we are now recording the transit of Mercury through the Sun. We do this event to try and reach out to the people, in order to raise awareness about space in UAE."
Al Remeithi pointed out that although the sighting is rare, what is also equally crucial is the encouragement UAE's Space Agency is attempting to provide for future generations, to simply get on board and discover their own interests about planets that are beyond our own planet Earth.
"We want to raise the astronomy culture in UAE. We would like to reach more numbers of students, so we can spark that passion in them to study astronomy and space sciences."
"The UAE Space Agency is coordinating with the International Astronomy Centre in Abu Dhabi and recording the Mercury transit the Sun. This event occurs 13 to 14 times every 100 years. Last time this happened was in 2006," he added.
He noted that the UAE is certainly lucky to witness the planet transit across the face of the Sun, as countries in South East Asia are unable to see the exceptional passage.
Furthermore, the only planets that do make this passage are Venus and Mercury, although transits of Venus takes place in pairs and has over a century separating each pair.
Mohammed Odeh, Director of the International Astronomy Centre, told Khaleej Times that it takes approximately 7.5 hours for Mercury to transit the Sun.
"What is happening now is a rare astronomic event," he said.
"When planets are orbiting the Sun, sometimes a certain planet comes in line with another planet. Right now, Earth, Mercury and the Sun are all in line and straight in the same plain," said Odeh.
"The telescope allows us to see a small moving disk, (Mercury), which takes about 7.5 hours to cross the Sun. However, he noted that due to Monday's cloudy weather, it was somewhat difficult to spot the planet clearly.
"We aren't really able to see it because of the clouds, but we can still see it from time to time."
Two telescopes were used during the event in Abu Dhabi. The first is a normal telescope with high magnification, which was connected to the camera to broadcast the transit to the screen for the viewers to witness live.
The other was a solar telescope which gives viewers rare sightings of prominence and flares from the Sun itself.
The next extraordinary passage between Mercury and the Sun is predicted to take place in 2019 and then in 2032.
jasmine@khaleejtimes.com
 

• UAE
• Abu Dhabi