Mercury is currently photo-bombing the Sun (watch the livestream here)

Mercury, the Solar System’s smallest planet, is currently making its rare and seriously cool journey across the face of the Sun, dubbed the Mercury Transition by astronomers.

It’s an event that only happens 13 times each century, and allows astronomers to better study the tiny, swelteringly hot planet.

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun at just over 35-million miles from the star, and takes just 88 days to lap the huge flaming ball of gas. However, it’s quite rare for Earth to be facing the Sun while Mercury is visible. To put this into perspective, this phenomenon last happened 16 years ago.

Although do note that it’s a terrible idea to glance directly at the Sun with naked eyes to view the spectacle, thanks to the wonders of the internet, you can have at a livestream of the entire event at the bottom of this page, which began at 1pm SAST (or 4am Pacific for you in the States).

You can also follow the phenomenon and cheer Mercury on from Twitter directly below.

Tweets about #mercurytransit lang:en

Feature image: NASA via Twitter