Technically speaking, there was a solar eclipse of sorts going on today .. but since Mercury is just a dot when seen against the sun, it is called a traversal of Mercury across the sun. Since I did not have a special telescope with a dark lens, it was good enough for me to check the accelerated video clip from NASA. For me, the sun is the amazing thing in the clip. Such a giant ball of hydrogen fusion – has been at it for 4.5 billion years, and will be around for another estimated 6 billion years. Will Earth still have humans on, then? And hopefully the humans would have found another Earth to inhabit by then, because the sun will become a red giant, cast off its lighter elements in a planetary nebula, and end up as a white dwarf.
