The Transit of Mercury 2019 November 11 UTC

The third transit of the 21st Century occurred on 2019 November 12 (local time). Unfortunately Australia missed out completely as the entire transit occurred during Australian night time. It was too long to wait until 2032 for the next so I travelled to Napier on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island to see the last hour  over the Pacific Ocean after sunrise. 

It was always going to be a challenge due to low elevation and likely low level cloud over the water. As it eventuated the sky to the east was almost completely clouded over except for a small chink. The sun entered that chink for three minutes about 20 minutes after sunrise which allowed a few images to be taken, but at the low elevation of 4 degrees. At no stage was the sun's disk entirely visible.

From Napier the sun rose at 5:58am and the transit ended at 7:07am (local time) on the 12th. Ten minutes after the end it started to rain. I consider myself rather lucky!