While the Mercury transit was in progress, photographer Hans Schremmer of Moers, Germany, was surprised when this airplane appeared:

The nose of the streaking jet points directly toward the tiny black disk of Mercury. Schremmer captured the image using an 8 Inch Schmitt-Cassegrain (C-8) telescope capped by a Thousands Oaks Filter. Bartosz Laszczynski saw another transiting jet over Leszno, Poland. Philippe Jacquot saw yet another airplane crossing the Sun from France.

SPACE STATION MOVIE: Airplanes weren't the only things crossing the sun during the transit of Mercury. A spacecraft did it, too: the International Space Station (ISS). Alfons & Alexander Gabel captured the rare event on video: 600 kb AVI (encoded using DivX) or 6 MB Quicktime. "The ISS crossed the solar disk like a ghostly shadow," recalls onlooker Ulrich Rieth. "Some of us even saw a triangle-like structure consisting of solar panels and some modules. The size of the ISS was about the same as the size of Mercury, but its speed was unbelievable."

• "black drop" pictures (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) from James Kevin Ty of the Philippine Astronomical Society in Manilla;
• movie from Jim Fakatselis of Long Island, NY, where the sun was barely above the horizon during the transit;
• computer animation from F. Reddy, author: Celestial Delights;

Jörgen Blom made this sketch of the transit from Stockholm. "I was amazed," says Blom, "that little Mercury seemed so large close to the sun's edge, but then remembered that Mercury of course is not on the sun's surface and therefore does not get foreshortened at the sun's edge as do the sunspots."

• drawings (1,2) from Jörgen Blom of Stockholm, Sweden;
• projected image from Andy Veh of Soldotna, Alaska;
• pictures (1,2) from Dennis Pang of Hong Kong;
• pictures and movies from students in Sonderborg, Denmark;
• picture from Val and Andrew White of Culcheth, UK;
• computer animation from Krzysztof Szatkowski of Poland;

"We had a great view," says Alan Fitzsimmons of Belfast, Northern Ireland, who captured this H-alpha image from the roof of the Physics Building at Queen's University: (continued below)

"It was marvelous!" says astronomer Bartek Okonek of Leszno, Poland. Using an 8" telescope, he took this picture at 12:17 CET:

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