Mercury pass in front of the Sun

On Nov. 08th, as some might be aware, Mercury passed between the Sun and Earth. The event repeats around 16 years, and this year it could be seen fairly clear from 19:00GMT to 0:00GMT. Some people from the Physics department at FSU set up some telescopes to see the event. Normally you can't see directly to the Sun, so in order to watch the pass of Mercury the light had to be projected onto a surface. The Sun is seen as large white (light) and Mercury is just a small dot because of the shadow it produces.
The following image, courtesy of Ken Ford, was taken from the projection of one of the telescopes. As you may notice the size of Mercury compared to the Sun is insignificant (Diameter: 4879 KM vs 1.392×10^6 km), and it takes about 5 hours to move from one side of the sun to the other.



I modified the original image to increase the contrast and reduce the brightness so that the little dot of Mercury could be seen, in the original image you can barely see the planet due to it's size and the brightness from the Sun.