Venus is a bigger and closer world to us than is Mercury. Looking like a small sunspot slowly poking its way across the Sun, Mercury would be tough to detect at sunrise. Transits of Mercury are rare; last century there were only 13. I missed transits like the one on May 9, 1970. The last one, in November 1999, was visible from our home in Arizona but we were on the Mediterranean Sea hoping to see a bright display of Leonid meteors. Finally, since this year's transit would be completed before sunrise from Arizona, I had to travel toward the east coast of North America to see it.

On the evening of Monday, May 5, a group of visitors on a tour of Arizona stopped by at our home for an evening of observing. A few hours later, with three hours of sleep early in the morning of Tuesday, May 6, I headed off to Montreal. Although the weather seemed good most of the way there, the plane landed in a steady drizzle that persisted well into the evening.