Mini Mercury skips across sun’s vast glare in rare transit
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Mini Mercury skipped across the vast, glaring face of the sun Monday in a rare celestial transit.
Stargazers used solar-filtered binoculars and telescopes to spot Mercury — a tiny black dot — as it passed directly between Earth and the sun on Monday.
The eastern U.S. and Canada got the whole 5 ½-hour show, weather permitting, along with Central and South America. The rest of the world, except for Asia and Australia, got just a sampling.
Mercury is the solar system’s smallest, innermost planet.