Posted at 4:54 p.m., Thursday, November 2, 2006
Hawai`i telescopes to track planet's path
Advertiser Staff
HILO — University of Hawai`i astronomers will use special telescopes at the summits of Haleakala and Mauna Kea to transmit live images over the Internet as the planet Mercury passes between Earth and sun on Nov. 8.The "Mercury Transit Hawaiian Style" webcast will record the five-hour transit, which begins at 9:12 a.m. HST.
The webcast will include real-time images of the transit from professional and amateur astronomers in a variety of wavelengths of light, including white light, hydrogen-alpha, and calcium-K.
Sets of images will also be compiled into time-lapse movies of the transit and will be updated every half hour.
Because Mercury is so much smaller than the sun, the transit will not be visible to the naked eye. Mercury will not transit the sun again until May 2016.
The webcast will include interviews with scientists at the Institute for Astronomy (IfA) on the UH-Manoa campus, at the Haleakala High Altitude Observatory Site, at the IfA Waiakoa facility on Maui, and at the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawai`i.
The webcast is a collaboration among the University of Hawai`i Institute for Astronomy (IfA), University of Hawai`i at Hilo Physics and Astronomy Department, and the Haleakala Amateur Astronomers.
For more information and to view the event live, go to http://astroday.net/MercTransit06.html
