{"id":91636,"date":"2019-11-19T00:17:07","date_gmt":"2019-11-19T00:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/san-juan-college-views-historic-mercury-transit\/"},"modified":"2019-11-19T00:17:07","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T00:17:07","slug":"san-juan-college-views-historic-mercury-transit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/san-juan-college-views-historic-mercury-transit\/","title":{"rendered":"San Juan College views historic Mercury transit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><!-- gallery:6ab53f01-3d83-40c2-ba18-ca306c0b568b --><\/p>\n<p>FARMINGTON \u2013 The transit of Mercury appeared as a small seemingly insignificant dot as it passed in front of the sun Monday, but the magic wasn\u2019t lost to viewers at San Juan College.<\/p>\n<p>Passersby were able to take a peek at the event from 9 to 11 a.m. thanks to the aid of a telescope in the courtyard set up by the college\u2019s planetarium. As faculty and students stepped up to take a peek, more than one person wondered at the small black dot seen against the vast white-yellow background of the sun. \u201cNo way, that\u2019s Mercury?\u201d said one student.<\/p>\n<p>Mercury passed between the sun and the Earth, making itself visible as a small black dot. The transit started at 5:35 a.m. and ended around 11:04 a.m., when the planet completed the transit and disappeared from view. The next Mercury transit won\u2019t occur until November 2032.<\/p>\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=7ddf3d72-6c0f-4f6e-8294-a85f04f4e0ce&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" alt=\"The planet Mercury, lower left, passes between Earth and the sun Monday morning. The rare celestial event will not be seen again until 2032. The photograph was taken through a solar filter on a telephoto lens at Giuffrida park in Meriden, Conn.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">The planet Mercury, lower left, passes between Earth and the sun Monday morning. The rare celestial event will not be seen again until 2032. The photograph was taken through a solar filter on a telephoto lens at Giuffrida park in Meriden, Conn.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Dave Zajac\/Record-Journal via AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>\u201cMost of your field is going to be the sun, just looks like a yellow-white ball. The little black dot, perfectly round, is Mercury\u2019s silhouette,\u201d said David Mayeux, astronomy professor and planetarium coordinator. Mayeux set up the telescope and helped identify the planet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven though Mercury passes around between the Earth and the sun every three months, usually it\u2019s right above or right below the disk of the sun,\u201d Mayeux said. \u201cIt just happens today that it\u2019s passing exactly in front.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Danielle Sullivan, associate professor of English at San Juan College, said while it might not look like much through the telescope, \u201cunderstanding it is really cool,\u201d and knowing it\u2019s so rare makes it special.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI actually dismissed my class early so they could come and take a look,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p><em class=\"mwc_shirttail\"><a href=\"mailto:lweber@durangoherald.com\">lweber@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>to view it is 2032<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91637,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[799,1290,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-91636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-farmington","tag-natural-science","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91636"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=91636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}