Transit of Mercury

Mercury made a rare (every seven years) transit across the sun yesterday. We were quite interested in watching it, but couldn't find anyone with a telescope or the right solar filter. We had pretty much given up on seeing it. Then on the way home from Lory State Park yesterday I made a wrong turn. We wound up taking the scenic route around the reservoir. As we were descending down the hill, I spotted a guy with a bunch of big telescopes. I knew immediately he had to be looking at Mercury. In Michael's words, I "slammed on the brakes and swerved over" so we could check it out. The man immediately invited us to look. Amazingly we caught the tail end of the crossing. The telescope was super high quality, and it was an amazing thing to witness! It's hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of things lining up like that in the solar system. The guy with the telescopes was Ross Cunniff. After he said his name, I recognized him as a Fort Collins city council member. This morning I discovered his blog which includes some cool animation of Mercury's transit! Thanks Ross!!!
http://racunniff.blogspot.com/