For the Reporter

Jon Bearscove captured images of the celestial transit of Mercury in front of the sun from Lakeland Hills on Monday morning.

The small dot in the lower left of Bearscove’s photo is Mercury, and the remaining larger “blemishes” are sunspots.

Mercury, which is little larger than Earth’s moon, passes between our planet and the sun about 13 times in a century, according to NASA. The last pass was in 2006.

Bearscove used a Televue 76-millieter telescope, Kendrick Astro Instruments solar filter, and a Panasonic GF-1 to capture the event.

Below is Bearscove’s zoomed photo of Mercury in front of the sun.

According to Bearscove:

• Mercury is 3,032 miles in diameter. That dot you see in the photo below is 3,032 miles across.

• Mercury is 35 million miles from the sun, so that dot is 35 million miles from the background “pale white” color … the sun.

• That large sunspot is called 2542, and is about three to four times the size of the Earth.