2016 Transit of Mercury

ESA live stream is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM688ZNSyWQ

Live visible image updated every 30s or so: http://cesar-tools.cosmos.esa.int/sun_monitor/image_hel_visi...

You can watch online at http://live.slooh.com/stadium/live/transit-of-mercury-2016

I have a rarely-used telescope and decided to drag it to the top of a parking deck downtown to view the transit. However, I only brought about 20x (*edit... confused my 80mm aperture with 400mm focal length) magnification.

Mercury basically looked like a speck of dust on the lens.

That said, there is something about the physical process of amateur astronomy that still manages to make the experience meaningful.

One thing I learned from watching the transit on a YouTube livestream of someone else's telescope view (because New Zealand was in the no-see zone) is that YouTube livestreams have live commenting that works just as good or better than Periscope, and I was chatting with the owner of the telescope.

The only downside is the lack of easy discovery for current livestreams (if there's no special event to search for that people would be livestreaming), which I guess is what YouTube Connect will be all about.

See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuIkL23Bsb8

I swear that first time I read the headline, I thought: now we will begin to discuss astrology here??? :)