Dr. David Sands with his solarscope.

LOCAL astronomy enthusiast Dr. David Sands yesterday introduced dozens of Bahamians to one of the rarest astronomical occurrences- a Mercury transit across the face of the sun.

Dr. Sands made his special Solarscope available for anyone wanting to view the transit at the Green Parrot restaurant, East Bay Street.

The retired paediatrician told The Tribune that a Mercury transit had not been seen in almost ten years, explaining that a transit occurs when one of the inner planets, Mercury or Venus, passes between the Earth and the Sun. Most of the time, the inner planets pass either above or below the Sun.

Yesterday’s Mercury transit lasted seven and a half hours, between 7:12am and 2:42pm.

According to Dr. Sands, there are only certain points in these planets’ orbits, called nodes, when they are in the plane of the Earth’s orbit. For Venus, these nodes occur in June and December while for Mercury, they occur in May and November. Transits can occur only in those months.

The next transit of Mercury will not happen until 2019.

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