Mercury Transit 9th May 2016..... Your Sightings

[Adrian Condon]

Hi,

I thought a thread to report your sightings of how well you got on viewing the Mercury Transit would be interesting.....

From Kings Langley     Hazy sky, saw Mercury starting the transit at 12:13 today. Saw some sunspots as well.

13:10 Sun in cloud, it is meant to get cloudier as the afternoon goes on. Shame...

The SoHO Viewer on my iPad  last updated the Continuum Filter image of the Sun at 10:30am. Eagerly awaiting the next update!

Cheers

Adrian

 

[LukeSkywatcher]

I went outside at about 12:30 not expecting to see anything due to cloud. Pointed my scope towards the Sun and i was bang on target 1st go. No solar finder or anything.........pot luck.

Clouds made it difficult to see Mercury at first but then i spotted (no pun intended) it in the 3 o' clock position. Its actually bigger than i expected but still tiny. Its moving quite fast. Clouds came over thick a couple of times and i lost sight of the Sun.  Its a bit hit and miss but hopefully view may improve later. Bit breezy too so the tripod was shaking a little,but nothing too bad.

Cant say im overwhelmed by the event, but least i can say i saw it.

p.s.~~~its only 2016.

*update*

13:45pm: Went back out for another look and as i was observing, a plane flew right across the Sun. 

[cotterless45]

Yep, lovely ! 

[Fozzie]

Managed to catch 1st and 2nd approaches, lovely crisp dark "nibble" out of the sun to start with followed by the tear drop effect.. selfishly kept that to me before I invited work colleague's to take a look, been out with around 15 people so far.. Although one chap came and asked what we were doing, so I told him and asked if he wanted a look "nah your alright, going for a sandwich!" was the response.  He works on the 1st floor, bit odd that lot upstairs lol.

Snap by one of my colleagues through the generic phone device

Clear Sky's

Fozzie

Oh I've put an orange filter in as I got fed up with explaining why the sun was green....

 

[nightfisher]

I managed a very quick look in with light as my good friend had his Lyra f11 set up and i had given him a solar filter to use for this, very nice, caught it at 18.15 hours so it was getting toward the edge of the disk

[notaclue]

Saw it for most of the afternoon with some very clear skies in West Yorks.  Nice to see 2 celestial bodies in one go.  Next time it will do that will be 2049 so if you missed it... 

[Moonshane]

Quick photo of my sketches. Filled in some blanks on trajectory using my artistic licence

Awesome.

[DAVE AMENDALL]

Bingham Nottinghamshire. Celestron C8xlt with Thousand Oaks white light filter.Sky clear with some haze

[saac]

Absolutely fantastic day in East of Scotland, completely clear from beginning to end.  Last year we had the same for the partial eclipse and now today, could not have been better.  Kind of makes up for all the rubbish weather over the winter.

Jim

 

 

 

[Peter Drew]

Perfectly visible from start to finish. The wind made photography a little challenging. Several Ha and WL telescopes from 40mm to 150mm in use and a good number of visitors. 

[hadyn42]

Hello All

We managed to see the transit of Mercury from two locations on the Isle of Man. There was excellent viewing conditions over here on the island yesterday. I took my ED80, HEQ5 tripod with Skytee2 head attached, with of course a Solar filter fitted.  I found the best views were obtained with a 15mm BST eyepiece and an orange filter fitted.  Port Erin was my first location at 1.30pm and we viewed the transit until about 5pm at a friends house, who had never done any solar observing up untill yesterday.  I then drove home to Onchan where I set up the gear again for my wife to be able to see Mecury for a further hour, before packing up in time for tea.

There were three largish sunspots viewed with around twenty mini sunspots scattered around the main three.

Best regards,

Hadyn - IOM