Astronomers gear up for planetary alignment

Are you ready for one of the highlights of the skywatchers' year. Astronomers are preparing for one when Sun, Mercury and Earth will line up. It's a rear phenomenon that happens a dozen or so times in a century.
Mercury will be seen through telescope as a black dot ( May as a disk ) over the face of our star, that will last seven and a half hours.

Pascal Descamps of the Paris Observatory said 

At the start, Mercury will look as if it is nibbling at the edge of the Sun, and then it will very slowly cross its surface and leave the other side, it's something rare, because it requires the Sun, Mercury and Earth to be in almost perfect alignment.

Mercury is the smallest plant in our solar system. It completes an orbit every 88 days. And passes between Earth and sun every 116 days. As Mercury's orbit is tilted, so, from

Earths perspective, it appears, to pass above or below the Sun.

Today ( Monday 9th of May ), according to Greenwich time, we will be able to see Mercury between 11:12 to 18:42. 

 RAS President Martin Barstow said

It is always exciting to see rare astronomical phenomena such as this transit of Mercury, they show that astronomy is a science that is accessible to everyone.

The last Mercury lineup was 10 years ago, and the next will be in 2019, followed by 2032 and 2049.

Where to view the transit of Mercury

1. The UK's Royal Astronomical Society has a list of public viewing events and a guide for schools
2. Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory will make images from its satellite available in real time
3. The European Space Agency will stream live images and host a Google Hangout during the transit