Transit of Mercury: The Movie

I think it’s probably impossible for us to truly understand the size of a star, even an ordinary, not particularly big star like our sun.

Check out this page from NASA with images from the recent transit of Mercury across the face of the sun. In particular, take time to download the movie. Watch the surface of the sun boil. Then remember that that round dot is both a whole planet and millions of kilometres closer to us than the sun–and that each of the “granules” you see on the sun’s surface is about the size of, say, North America.

Feeling insignificant yet?

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