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Our Island Universe: Transit of Mercury

NASA

How big is the Solar System? You can figure out the absolute size and scale using simple high school geometry. On the morning of Monday, November 11, 2019, tiny planet Mercury will cross the solar disk. Our predecessors figured out that by using the timing of the "transit of Mercury" you can deduce the Earth-Sun distance, and in turn, just how big our Solar System is. #OurIslandUniverse

Tom Polakis of Tempe AZ made this movie of a previous Mercury transit on May 9, 2016

Greg Jenkins has been the Operations Director at MSPR since 1999. Greg is a 1996 graduate of Morehead State University with a BME in Music Education and received a Masters of Science in Industrial Technology in 2008. Greg oversees training, scheduling, and evaluation of the student board operator staff, preparation of the daily traffic logs and serves as weekday classical music host. He is also the webmaster of the MSPR website and maintains MSPR's webstreaming and podcasting.