Mercury will transit the sun tomorrow (11/11)

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On Nov. 11, people across most of the world can catch the planet Mercury passing across the sun. This rare event won't be seen from Earth again until 2032, so we put together this full guide of the science behind the sight and how best to observe it yourself.

The smallest planet in the solar system is also the closest to our star, and occasionally it crosses in front of the sun's bright disk from our perspective here on Earth. The last time this happened was in 2016, but after this upcoming transit, we'll have to wait another 13 years to see the next one.

Mercury will begin its journey across the sun on Nov. 11 at 7:35 a.m. EST (1235 GMT), and the entire transit will take roughly 5 and a half hours, ending at 1:04 p.m. EST (1804 GMT), according to NASA.



Mercury

Mercury is the smallest and innermost planet in the Solar System. Its orbit around the Sun takes only 87.97 days, the shortest of all the planets in the Solar System. It is named after the Roman deity Mercury, the messenger of the gods.

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Two spacecraft have visited Mercury: Mariner 10 flew by in 1974 and 1975; and MESSENGER, launched in 2004, orbited Mercury over 4,000 times in four years before exhausting its fuel and crashing into the planet's surface on April 30, 2015.[19][20][21] The BepiColombo spacecraft is planned to arrive at Mercury in 2025.