Today (or yesterday truth be told, seeing as it's after midnight) my grandfather sent me a link to an article about the upcoming Mercury transit. I kid you not, I spent a full five minutes trying to figure out how the living heck that was possible. It just didn't make a bit of sense. The geometry is all wrong! Mercury can't come between the Earth and Sun!
After a bit of this kind of logic and even a bit of Space.com surfing for more info I finally realized that it's a Mercury transit.
Now I can here you saying to yourself, "Yeah, Mercury, you said that. What's the point?"
Well, my friend, the point is that in my little planetary diagram buried deep within the synapses of my little brain I had juxtaposed...wait for it...Mars with Mercury. Yes indeed. Not consciously. I did not actually sit there and think to myself, "Mercury is farther from the sun then Earth." But I apparently stopped reading at the "M". Do I do that often? I don't think so...
Funny moment when I finally realized that, oh gee whiz, there can conceivably be a Mercury transit because...it's Mercury!
And that, boys and girls, was Renee's Genius Monday Moment.
Thanks a lot folks, I'll be here all week!
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Worth checking out, at the very least because I've been blamed for something on it and/or it's got a great name! And it's published by my friend Kara. ;) www.ChevronSeven.blogspot.com
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3 comments:
I'll get around to checking that blog and the yes, a transit can occur for Mercury (and Venus for that matter) as viewed from the Earth. The Venus ones are paired and occur every some 100 years while the Hg ones occur much more frequently; 13 per century. Best part is, we have seen the first* transit of Venus and, in theory, we'll be around for the second transit too.
*first being the first one in the pair, not the one that occurred billions of years ago.
Huh, now you see, I did not know that. I do love learning something new everyday!
Also good use of "Hg". :)
I honestly wouldn't post this sort of thing on the web if you do hope to really work at NASA, or they might get wind of it and think better of allowing you to have any part in projecting of a couple billion dollars worth of goods.
ps Hobble got another new lease until at least 2010 and will be upgraded :)
Kara has a nice blog. Does the title come from Stargate?
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