APS teachers and students combined textbook science facts with real world learning when they recently viewed a rare celestial event. Equipped with sun-filtered telescopes and information about the solar system, students watched the transit of Mercury during their recess.  The transit occurs when the planet Mercury comes between the Sun and the Earth.  Mercury can be seen as a small black dot moving across the face of the Sun.  Mercury appears only 1/194 the size of the Sun.

Students not only observed Mercury crossing the sun, but they also saw some spectacular sunspots.  Since there are only 13 transits of Mercury each century, teachers hoped to excite students with this extraordinary opportunity.

To prepare students for this planetary event, McCool had them research Web sites like spaceweather.com and nasa.gov.