ESA live stream is here: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM688ZNSyWQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM688ZNSyWQ</a><p>Live visible image updated every 30s or so: <a href="http://cesar-tools.cosmos.esa.int/sun_monitor/image_hel_visible_large_latest.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://cesar-tools.cosmos.esa.int/sun_monitor/image_hel_visi...</a>
You can watch online at <a href="http://live.slooh.com/stadium/live/transit-of-mercury-2016" rel="nofollow">http://live.slooh.com/stadium/live/transit-of-mercury-2016</a>
I have a rarely-used telescope and decided to drag it to the top of a parking deck downtown to view the transit. However, I only brought about 20x (*edit... confused my 80mm aperture with 400mm focal length) magnification.<p>Mercury basically looked like a speck of dust on the lens.<p>That said, there is something about the physical process of amateur astronomy that still manages to make the experience meaningful.
One thing I learned from watching the transit on a YouTube livestream of someone else's telescope view (because New Zealand was in the no-see zone) is that YouTube livestreams have live commenting that works just as good or better than Periscope, and I was chatting with the owner of the telescope.<p>The only downside is the lack of easy discovery for current livestreams (if there's no special event to search for that people would be livestreaming), which I guess is what YouTube Connect will be all about.
See also <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuIkL23Bsb8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuIkL23Bsb8</a>