--- title: Transit of Mercury: Watch Live Stream and See Mercury's Path description: Monday is your chance to see a rare event that occurs only about 13 times each century: Mercury will cross in front of the sun. canonical: https://time.com/4322587/mercury-transit-sun-livestream/ author: Tessa Berenson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-05-09T12:29:22.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-05T08:50:31.218Z article:section: Science og:title: See Mercury's Path as It Crosses in Front of the Sun og:description: It only happens about a dozen times a century og:url: https://time.com/4322587/mercury-transit-sun-livestream/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5eb8f9b571f222e8/69889264428a9e34decd28b8/mercury-sun-nasa-planetary-transit.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1280 og:image:height: 720 og:image:alt: The 2016 Mercury planetary transit is seen in a NASA conceptual image, made of many images captured by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) during the last Mercury transit in 2006 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: See Mercury's Path as It Crosses in Front of the Sun twitter:description: It only happens about a dozen times a century twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5eb8f9b571f222e8/69889264428a9e34decd28b8/mercury-sun-nasa-planetary-transit.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # See Mercury's Path as It Crosses in Front of the Sun > Sponsored content. 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Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=ef9c7955-6c32-4ddc-92de-b90bd05c91b0&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Slooh Transit of Mercury Highlights [Watch (HLS stream): Slooh Transit of Mercury Highlights](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/9XPc2Wq5.m3u8) (3:41)  _Published 2016-05-11. Mercury crossed in front of the rising sun on the morning of May 9th, a rare event seen from Earth only 13 or 14 times each century._ by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/) and [Slooh](https://time.com/author/slooh/) May 9, 2016 12:29 PM UTC Mercury crossed in front of the rising sun on the morning of May 9th, a rare event seen from Earth only 13 or 14 times each century. by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/) and [Slooh](https://time.com/author/slooh/) May 9, 2016 12:29 PM UTC On Monday, May 8th, Slooh gave us all a chance to see a rare event that occurs only about 13 times each century: [Mercury crossing in front of the sun](https://main.slooh.com/event/transit-of-mercury/). From about 7 a.m. to 2:45 p.m, the event, known as the transit of Mercury, was live broadcast by [Slooh](http://www.slooh.com/). See the path Mercury will traveled here: > [](https://twitter.com/NASASunEarth/status/728332077402296321) “The transit of Mercury reminds us that all of the planets, including Earth, are in rapid and perpetual motion,” said Paul Cox, Slooh’s host, in a press release. _Slooh is a TIME partner. You can go to_ [_Slooh.com_](http://live.slooh.com/) _to join and watch this live broadcast, snap and share your own photos during the event, chat with audience members and interact with the hosts, and personally control Slooh’s telescopes._ ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Wow, we have an amazing show for you today. Slooh's telescope partners in Dubai, France, the Canary Islands, South Africa, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada are all eagerly awaiting. For the tiny planet Mercury to start its journey across the face of our local star, the sun. And while we watch the stunning live views that we've got we'll have a brilliant line up of expert guests joining us at the top of each hour. There it is! This looks beautiful. There it is. So now this is still looking. It still looks like we've got this black dot affect which joining up the black circle of Mercury to that outer limb, and there it is. There is second contact just when we see the sun reappear. On the other side of mercury, there is that tiny, tiny dot. Wow, the guys at the [ UNKNOWN ] who sold us the telescope, thank you so much for that [ UNKNOWN ] And it's significant because [ UNKNOWN ] When we look at the whole Copernican revolution, the observations of Galileo, the emerging physics of that time, the Enlightenment of Des Cartes, often times that we can recall the, for lack of a better term, the negative aspects of what happened with Galileo and the church. But there was also at that same time Time to after this a strong quest to try to bring the church into what's this new emerging physics, how we understand ourselves and how do we understand faith in light of all this. We are, we don't have shifts, right? We don't have shifts to go to next Thursday afternoon but we are making and drawing a map. Off the most fascinating places to visit or to look at. And we don't even have to go there because light travels for free through the universe. You're absolutely right. Until Galileo started using the telescope and [ UNKNOWN ] So are transit in 1631, all people knew was that Mercury became invisible. Yep. In the sky, it was so close to the sun, the sun is so bright, we just couldn't see it, so it disappeared. And I think that's one reason why in ancient mist the planet develop a bit of reputation as a trickster. You get a lot of people online talking about something like this. That Mercury retrograde is affecting their lives. People would say, I'm not going to get out of bed today because Mercury is in retrograde and I think that it's going to negatively impact my life. And so really, it's gonna be better for everyone if I just stay in bed. You know it's obvious That the things in the sky mean something to you. Because we go to sleep and wake up by the sun, and the moon affects us. So it's like all these things, they have to affect us. We just have to figure out how they affect us and what does it mean to you. To you. There it is. It's still a circle, isn't it. It's still disconnected from the outside. There's the black drop effect. That's it. That is the black drop effect that you see only in transit with Mercury and Venus. You can see, look, it's joined it up. It looks like it's sucked some of the planet out, but it's Pull some of the sun in. What a remarkable image there. 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