The Star. WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 1924. TRANSIT OF MERCURY.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLIV, Issue XLIV, 7 May 1924, Page 4

The Star.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 1924. TRANSIT OF MERCURY.

Delivered every evening by 6 o'clock in Hawera, Manaia, Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Maogatoki, Kaponga, Awatuna, Qpunake, Otakeho, Manutahi, Alton, Hurleyville, Patea, . Waverley, Mokoia, Whakamara, Obangai, Meremere, Fraser Road, and Axaiata.

A rather unique phenomenon will take place to-morrow, when the planet Mercury will transit across the face of the sun. Although transits of Mercury are comparatively rare, they are not 50 rare as transits of- Venus, the laat of which took place in 1882, and no similar transit of Venus will occur till the year 2004. Mercury Bay1, in, the North Island of 2sew Zealand, is so named because it was here on November 9th, 1769, that Captain Cook witnessed a transit of Mercury. For the coming transit New Zealand is the best placed of all countries, the first contact of the transit being at about 9.15 a.m. tomorrow, the planet being visible a% about the centre of the sun at 1.10 p.m., and passing off at the other edge at 5.7 p.m., just after the sun sets. To anyone with very keen eyesight it may just possibly be visible (though this is doubtful) if the sun be viewed with smoked or coloured glass. Sun spots are sometimes visible without telescopic vision, but these are sometimes so large that they would easily swallow planets the size of the earth. To anyone, however, who has a telescope, even as small as 1-inch, Mercury will be plainly visible as it passes over the sun's disc, but anyone using a telescope shoulfl be warned to use very powerful dark or coloured glass over the eyepiece on account of the magnification. Mercury is the nearest planet to the sun, being distant from it a little over thirty million miles. Its diameter is not half that of the earth's, and its smallness on the sun's disc can be gauged from the fact that the volume of the sun is more than a million times that of the earth. The next planet from the sun is Venus (about the same size as the earth), and then comes the earth. Mercury is usually considered to always turn the same face to the sun, as the moon does to our earth. It is also thought to have lost its atmosphere wholly or in part as our moon has done, though the modern view is that our moon still possesses a very thin atmosphere. Mercury being so near the sun, and being so seldom seen, very little is known of its surface, though Professor Lowell considered he could make out markings on it similiar to the so-called "canals" on Mars.