Transit of Mercury
November 8, 2006

On Wednesday, Nov 8th, the planet Mercury will pass directly in front the Sun. This event will not be repeated until May of 2016!

H-alpha photo of the 2003 Transit of Mercury taken by The Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope
of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

NAU's Dept. of Physics & Astronomy and the Northern Arizona Astronomy & Astrobiology Club invite you to the NAU Campus observatory on Wednesday, November 8, starting at noon to watch a Transit of Mercury.

Image credit: Larry Koehn


Transit parameters: 

         First Contact:  19:12:04 UT (12:12 pm MST)
        Second Contact:  19:13:57 UT (12:32 pm MST)
      Greatest Transit:  21:41:04 UT ( 2:06 pm MST)
         Third Contact:  00:08:16 UT ( 5:15 pm MST)
        Fourth Contact:  00:10:08 UT ( 5:32 pm MST)

Admission is free, donations are greatly appreciated.

The NAU observatory is located on the NAU campus, just off San Francisco Street. The easily recognized, dome shaped building lies between McConnell Dr. and Butler Ave., approximately 1/2 mile north of the Walkup Skydome. The map below shows the route (in blue) to take from Milton Road (off the map on the left) to the observatory. The observatory (labeled 47 on the map) is circled in blue.



More transit information can be found here.