--- title: Slooh Transit of Mercury Highlights | TIME description: 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. canonical: https://time.com/video/9XPc2Wq5/ og:title: Slooh Transit of Mercury Highlights og:description: 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. og:url: https://time.com/video/9XPc2Wq5/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/9XPc2Wq5/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Slooh Transit of Mercury Highlights twitter:description: 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. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/9XPc2Wq5/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Slooh Transit of Mercury Highlights > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## 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._ --- Jul 27, 2023 8:05 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [That Tiny Black Dot on the Sun Yesterday? It Was Mercury, in a Rare Celestial Crossing](/video/d9CDVjBy/) ### That Tiny Black Dot on the Sun Yesterday? It Was Mercury, in a Rare Celestial Crossing [TIME Raw: Watch Mercury Pass In Front Of The Sun ](/video/9PmfO5sp/) ### TIME Raw: Watch Mercury Pass In Front Of The Sun [Watch Highlights of MESSENGER's Crash Into Mercury](/video/XyD9z8S9/) ### Watch Highlights of MESSENGER's Crash Into Mercury --- ## 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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