Ready for 9th May Mercury transit

[Knighty2112]

Well, had a great day following Mercury's path across the sun. Missed out on the last two minutes for 3rd and 4th contact due to the sun just setting below my neighbors roof top. Relocated quickly to my front garden where there was a [removed word] of light left, but still not enough as the lower edge of the sun where Mercury was was again dipping below another roof. But to be honest there was so much shimmer around the edge that I doubt I would have seen these two contact point very well.

Got some great shots with my IPhone, and loved every minute of the observation, which to date is the longest observation of any event I've ever done! Phew!  

Hope everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did! Cheers SGL!  

[Stub Mandrel]

Yep, a real marathon!

[101nut]

Spent first contact until 4pm demonstrating to school kids - that really is a marathon! :-)

We made the comparison of the event between 40mm Solarmax Ha and 80mm with a Baader Hershel wedge (both with Leica ASPH zooms). 

As always, comparing first contact across two scopes is difficult as you have to spot the entry position. However second contact comparisons are much easier. We did note that second contact in Ha was significantly before the white light. In addition, the teardrop effect was insignificant in Ha but really held on in white light. 

Unfortunately we had to stop for a while at 4pm (to go pond dipping!) and when we came back to the eyepieces at 7.20pm the sky clouded over so no third or fourth contact :-(

A really good day though.

AndyG

 

 

[Dave Lloyd]

It was cloudy right up until the start of the transit. cleared up then and we got some good views. Couple of photos too but nothing worth posting. When you see that tiny black disc against the Sun it`s easy to imagine Mercury as being pressed up almost against the solar surface but the Sun can`t be more than three times bigger in Mercury`s sky than it appears in ours.  

[Paz]

The weather looked questionable in the morning but the light overcast turned into more formed clouds with gaps between them so I set up at lunchtime and the weather gradually got better (who would have thought it possible!?).

I was viewing in white light with a 127mm Maksutov, with the best views and most time spent between about 73x to 112x. I spent more time looking at the large sunspot group than looking at Mercury - it's the biggest group I've seen directly myself (but that's probably not saying much as I don't have a lot of hours under my belt solar viewing). There was also a pair of small spots between the big group and Mercury (at the time I was viewing them made a shallow v rather than a straight line) and I think there was another spot or spots towards the northern edge of the disk that I noticed.

I know it's not much to look at (at least in white light) but it is incredible what you are looking at - a planet so small and far away and travelling so fast, and that big sun spot must be absolutely huge - I could see it in my 9x50 finder whereas I could not see Mercury in my finder.

I got another quick look in later in the early evening. Although Mercury looked the same but further across the sun's disk and everything had rotated around a bit, the lower altitude made for less definition in the sun spots.

I had a few filters in the wheel but with the cloud taking out some of the clarity and brightness they all suffered from dimming the image too  much and the best clarity was to be had with no filters (except the solar filter!).

[Stub Mandrel]

Really cross. For some unknown reason my  subs are all really dusty. I had spotted some dust in live view but it hadn't registered how bad it was :-(

Hoping a bit of stacking and retouching can recover some reasonable views. The dust seems to have moved a bit so flats don't get rid of it completely.

Still I will have some small pictures of first and second contact (purely by chance - I set up and started a test run, came in to check the times and found it was already happening!)

Here's my first stack... still a fair bit of work needed perhaps?

 

[Teletom]

On 5/6/2016 at 13:57, Knighty2112 said:

Very nice Nick. Love the sun finder scope!  

Yes, that's brilliant!

[Teletom]

My first ever view of Mercury after nearly 60 years! Spent a good afternoon in clear weather (thin cloud cover) with 8" Newtonian stopped down to 2.5". Used eyepiece projection (32mm eyepiece) onto card and took this shot with a hand-held Olympus V170 at 11.50 UT. Shows the large sunspot (I also saw a group of 3-4 pin-prick sized spots nearer the equator) with Mercury the dot at right. Looked a lot better with the eyes than in the pic, but at least I got something to stick in my astro-diary. Continued observations until 16.36. Thereafter the Sun obscured by neighbours' trees. No fancy gadgetry here! Technology is great but there's so little chance to use it in this country - oh for Arizona skies! But must get around to making a less deranged projection system. Great experience.

[Knighty2112]

Glad you had a good time with some great views. It was my first glimpse of Mercury too. Been doing astronomy on and off (mostly off sadly) since I got my first telescope at 14 years old, so it's took me 39 years to view it for the first time too!  

[Stub Mandrel]

I've managed to salvage an animation of first to second contact, including a 'dewdrop'. See here: