Caoimhín's Content

Today, we are yet again going to be looking into the future, into the reasonably distant future this time, but not quite as far as some previous videos. We will be looking forward into the 2030s, and we will also be looking a few months into the future, forward to November, in this case November the 13th. As you may know from having read some of these piece in the past, I often take suggestions for events in the distant future that are worth taking a look at and I often have little information other than a date and roughly where to look. In this instance, I was told to take a look at the Sun.

As such, we’re going to take a quick look at the Sun in 2032 on the 13th of the 11th in the middle of the day. The Moon isn’t particularly near the Sun, and I don’t see any of the planets particularly near the Sun either. Now, of course, taking a look at the Sun like that without the assistance of a telescope, you would miss anything like the transit of Mercury. While zooming in, Mercury did briefly pop into view. You would miss things like the transit of Mercury or the transit of Venus if you weren’t using a telescope, or the Stellarium software, to magnify your view and assist you.

Getting rid of the atmosphere and pulling back, Mercury certainly comes into view. The Sun and Mercury are very close together specifically on 13th, and they are only getting further apart on every other date. If we move into the past, Mercury ends up on the opposite side of the Sun, and it ends up further away in the future. Moving backwards in time slowly, the Sun and Mercury get closer and closer together. Eventually, Mercury passes directly in front of the Sun. We’ve got a transit of Mercury coming up in 2032. Transits of Mercury are quite rare events, so being able to catch one is a treat, it’s a real privilege to see a transit of Mercury. Although they are at least semi-regular, some are only visible from the poles or are very brief. The transit of Mercury we’re getting in 2032 looks like it’s a pretty long one, which is nice. Mercury passes across far off of center of the Sun, it’s making a chord almost across the top of the Sun. However, it isn’t just a glancing blow, it is crossing a pretty broad section of the Sun, so this transit of Mercury looks like it’s going to happen for a while. Unfortunately, it looks like it’s going to begin before the sunrise here in Ireland.

Taking a closer look at the beginning of the transit, one edge of Mercury lines up with the edge of the Sun at around 6:42. This is the first contact, when one side of Mercury touches one side of the Sun, then we have the very beginning of the transit between first and second contact, with part of Mercury in front of the Sun. Our second contact occurs with when the other edge of Mercury lines up with the Sun, ending when Mercury finally passes in front of the Sun just a minute later at around 6:43. This is before the Sun rises for us here in Ireland. It’s quite a bit under where the horizon would be. Although the transit begins while Mercury is still very much under the horizon for us here in Ireland, it still gets reasonably high into the sky while the transit is still occurring. Mercury is still in front of the Sun from 6:43 all the way through to its third contact here at 11:06. This is when one edge of Mercury lines up with the Sun as Mercury moves off the disc of the Sun. Next is the fourth contact and the transit finally finishing at just 11:07. This transit is going to last for a couple of hours, a little over 4 hours in total.

In a couple of the pieces recently where I looked at future events, I intended to take a look at multiple events and I didn’t give myself enough time. I got too wrapped up in looking at one event and didn’t leave time for a second. We may take a closer look at the 2032 transit of Mercury, seeing where it looks best now we know it doesn’t look best from here in Ireland, at a later date. However, the next date that I was told to take a look at is also in the 2030s, in 2039, and also in November/ However it is on a different date, we’re going to November 7th in 2039. I was yet again told to look at the Sun and it looks like Mercury is pretty close to the Sun again. Taking a look around, all of the other planets are off to the side and the Moon is again not too close. Mercury doesn’t look particularly illuminated, which would lead me to believe that it’s on our side of the Sun. Moving through time to bring the planet and Sun closer together, we get another transit of Mercury.

Two transits of Mercury! Transits of Mercury often come in pairs, similarly with other transits and things like eclipses. We will occasionally see these things grouped together, but then the gaps between them otherwise can be pretty long. Let’s check first to see if this transit is going to be visible at all from Ireland. It looks like 10am is the end of the transit, which means we’re only going to see a little bit of the transit from here in Ireland. It seems to be making its third contact at around 10:12 and its fourth contact there at around 10:15, so it does seem to be happening pretty slowly. The length of time that a transit takes doesn’t just depend on the motion of the planet that we’re seeing transit in front of the Sun, but also on the motion of the Earth. Even though the planets don’t have particularly elliptical orbits, they are still elliptical. I mentioned in the last piece that even though all of the planets have elliptical orbits, those elliptical orbits aren’t as elliptical as a comets, or some planets in other solar systems. Even though they’re only a little eccentric, that means that the planets are moving at different speeds at different parts of their orbit. We will tend to orbit quicker when we’re at one side of our orbit closer to the Sun, and then a little bit slower when we’re at our furthest from the Sun. All of the planets move a little bit faster during perihelion and a little bit slower at aphelion.

With this transit, we’re getting our first contact at 7:19 and our second contact at 7:19. This gives us more than a couple of hours worth of transit again. This is also still before the Sun has risen for us here in Ireland. The beginning of the transit is just barely out of view for us here in Ireland. We should be seeing sunrise around 8 o’clock, with Mercury already moving across the Sun. It eventually crosses out the other side when we get a little bit closer to 10. It’s around 10:11 when Mercury finally crosses over the Sun. It looks like Mercury’s pretty close to being at its most inside the Sun, the easiest to see, with assistance, at around 8:40. Even though Ireland isn’t the best location to see them, both of these transits are going to be visible.

Both of these transits of Mercury are going to be visible over large portions of the Earth, and we only have to wait a decade or so for them to happen. Moving to other locations don’t seem to make much of a difference. It looks like moving a little bit further south on the planet, closer to the equator at least lets the Sun rise earlier, but it doesn’t look like Mercury’s going to be in front of the Sun for much longer from there. Transits of Mercury are more common than the transits of Venus, and this is because Venus takes a lot longer to orbit the Sun, so Venus won’t be in the right place as often as Mercury. Mercury is going to be roughly in the right place to be directly in front of the Sun more often than Venus is. Mercury’s transits happen more frequently, but they are commonly separated by about a decade. There’s roughly a decade or so between the transits, unless there’s only a couple of years between the transits. This time we have one transit in 2039 and another transit in 2032. Those are the pair together, and then the next transit after that is into the late 2040s and then into the 2050s, 2049 and 2052. Similarly, there was a transit of Mercury in 2019, which I did get to see with the correct kind of telescope, with solar telescopes which is necessary to take a look at these transits. Before the transit of Mercury in 2019 there was another transit in 2016. There was two close together, and then the last one before that was a whole decade back in 2006. With Mercury, we often get two transits reasonably close together, separated by a couple of years or a year or two, but then there’s usually a decade or so between the transit or the transit pairs again.

2032 is the next one, the next transit coming up and it looks like it’s going to be a good one. I think the 2032 transit might be a little bit better than the 2039 transit, but these aren’t particularly far in the future, so of course we can double check then.

I hope that you will get to see the transits of Mercury that are coming up in the 2030s, I hope that I get to see the transits the of Mercury that are coming up in the 2030s, and I hope that you enjoyed this piece. If you did, please do like it. If you enjoyed this content, then please do subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel. Thank you very much for reading and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.