Well today could be a great day (or not). But it could be a day of two halves.
If the rain clouds flooding the country relent, we could hopefully view the transit of Mercury which starts just after 12:35 today until Sunset. That’s good, as long as the clouds part so we can view it.
See my details of that event here:
https://www.star-gazing.co.uk/WebPage/mercurytran-20191111
However, there is another event taking place today which doesn’t appear to be getting a lot of attention at the moment.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is launching another Starlink cluster today.
This might not be as good.
The launch is scheduled for 14:56 UT, while the transit is in progress.
A backup launch windows is scheduled for 14:34 UT tomorrow (12th).
The launch of the Falcon 9 rocket can be viewed live here: spacex.com/webcast.
60 new Starlink satellites will be put into Earth orbit.
Once the satellites are in orbit, you may want to produce predictions for visibility from your location at:
https://n2yo.com/passes/?s=74001
It could look spectacular as the cluster catch the sunlight if the last launch is anything to go by.
But is the launch of these satellites going to be a really bad thing for us observers / imagers going forward?
See my previous blog entry about what this new constellation of satellites could mean for our night sky:
https://www.star-gazing.co.uk/WebPage/starlink-spectacle
Dave