Mercury Transit in H-Alpha

[petevasey]

Well, the weather was not kind today here in Northunberland, particularly at the start of this unusual event, but I managed to capture it just after the start. Mercury is the tiny black dot at around 8.30-o-clock right at the edge of the Sun's disc.  An hour or so later the skies cleared nicely for a short while and I was able to get a better full disc image with Mercury about a 1/4 of the way across, just below the centreline.  Then the rain arrived, and I never got another clear image.  But better than nothing, since there isn't another transit until November 2032, and that will have already started at Sunrise.

Taken using an Altair GPCAM3 128M on Solarview50 H-alpha telescope.  I'd hope to get a whole sequence, but not to be.  I might be able to do a short animation once I've looked at all the subs - I was attempting to take a shot every 2 minutes, but the clouds were very persistent!

A tiny hint of a prominence at 9-0-clock on the later image, but that's all - the Sun is in a very quiet mood at the moment!

Cheers,

Peter

[JamesF]

That second image is very nice.  Well done.

James

[PNJ]

well done Peter, 2nd image is my favourite .  

 

[Pete Presland]

Very  nicely captured