The first person ever to observe a transit of Mercury was Pierre Gassendi on November 7th 1631, despite the fact that Johannes Kepler had predicted both a Mercury- and a Venus-transit a while before.
by Anne Mette Sannes and Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard
Pierre Gassendi was the first human to see Mercury crossing the solar disk and also got a lunar crater named after him.
Photo: Louis-Édouard Rioult / Wikipedia
Gassendi, who was both an astronomer, philosopher, priest, scientist and mathematician (incredible what they had time for those days ...) did an unsuccessful attempt to observe the Venus transit a month later, but due to inaccurate astronomical tables, he did not realize that the transit was not visible from most of Europe, including Paris.
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Main page about the Mercury transit
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