Only two planets transit the Sun, as viewed from Earth. For a few hundred years, people have been watching Mercury and Venus drift across the Sun's surface, and using these events to measure the Earth-Sun distance, a measurement on which many other astronomical calculations rely. In addition to some of the history of these observations and measurements, they'll take a close look at these alignments of Earth, Sun and, Mercury or Venus, to see why transits occur when they do, always during the same two months of the year. Schedule: 10:00 - 10:30 - Irene Pease, History and Mechanics of Transits 10:30 - 11:00 - "Kuiper Kat," Katherine Troche, Mercury and the MESSENGER Mission 11:00 - 11:30 - Stan Honda, Photographing the Transit of Mercury 11:30 - 12:00 - Micah Acinapura, A view of Mercury in OpenSpace 12:00 - 12:30 - Brian Levine, Solar Missions 12:30 - 1:00 - William Koster, Transiting Exoplanets
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