Nov 11th Transit of Mercury

[David Smith]

Interesting day. Started off grey and overcast, having rained over night. Sky cleared around 10am and was glorious for a couple of hours. 25 past 12 clouds pile in and my phone pings as raintoday app tells me there is rain on the way! Despite this I setup anyway in an unusual show of optimism on my part but this time it paid off. I managed to evade the shower using a combination of tarps and a quick dive into the shed for a few minutes and in between the clouds, wind and rain I managed 9 captures across white light and Ca-K with 2 different scopes! Of the 9 I have managed to stack 4, the other 5 captures include clouds, trees and other paraphernalia that is probably causing the difficulty. I will make further attempts to stack these later as neither of my white light full disks stacked which is a little disappointing.

First up the Ca-K full disk, taken with the AR102xs @ native 500mm focal length so I could get the full disk in one capture

This one was taken with the Evostar @1000mm focal length

Then on to white light, both of these taken with the Evostar and Revelation 2.5x barlow for 2500mm focal length. They are just 21 minutes apart but it was a case of get what you can today!

 

 

[geoflewis]

Excellent images David,

Well done, Geof

[David Smith]

Thanks Geof. Given the conditions I was quite pleased with them.

[Rob Sellent]

Lovely images, David. Glad you had a little luck with the weather. I guess I was a tad more fortunate down in Spain. It was a very hazy, bad seeing day but like you, managed to view some of the transit.

[David Smith]

Thanks Rob. Seeing wasn't too bad here just the weather!

[johnfosteruk]

You did well David. I dusted off the gear for the first time in a while ready for today. Alas, I got a look while focusing then cloud came in! That's what I get for not being faithful to the Solar gods I guess

 

[David Smith]

Thanks John. I've not had many sessions recently myself to be honest!

[xtreemchaos]

great shots David, I was cursed here, darn weather. well done. charl.

[laudropb]

Cracking images David. Caught a quick glimpse between the clouds .

[Stu]

Excellent shots David. Love the Ca-K ones particularly. Seems like we all had to wait for the cloud gaps, we were lucky we didn't have any rainy though.

[MartinHiggins]

Very nice images! I'm quite new to observing and living in cloudy central Cardiff I expected the worst. It was a real buzz to see this transit through a Williams bino and C90 Mak where the solar disk filled the view.

Cheers

[David Smith]

1 hour ago, xtreemchaos said:

great shots David, I was cursed here, darn weather. well done. charl.

Thanks Charl. Sorry you missed out.

[David Smith]

1 hour ago, laudropb said:

Cracking images David. Caught a quick glimpse between the clouds .

Thanks John. Must have been a good day if even Scotland got a glimpse!

[David Smith]

1 hour ago, Stu said:

Excellent shots David. Love the Ca-K ones particularly. Seems like we all had to wait for the cloud gaps, we were lucky we didn't have any rainy though.

Thanks Stu. Not many Ca-K imagers on here so I thought I would focus on this aspect.

[David Smith]

1 hour ago, MartinHiggins said:

Very nice images! I'm quite new to observing and living in cloudy central Cardiff I expected the worst. It was a real buzz to see this transit through a Williams bino and C90 Mak where the solar disk filled the view.

Cheers

Thanks Martin. Glad you enjoyed it. We just need some more solar activity now to keep our interest after this little flurry of excitement.

[Uplooker]

Great images, well done on capturing them and being able to capture them. Each to their own but I personally prefer the WL images.

[David Smith]

Thanks Ian

[astroavani]

Great job, the definition of the planet was excellent! Here unfortunately the conditions were not suitable for a good result!

[David Smith]

Thanks Avani

[Pete Presland]

Very nicely captured

[MimasDeathStar]

Amazing shots - well done for finding a gap in the clouds! How are you getting on with the AR-102xs? Looks like an intriguing scope I'm thinking about upgrading my Meade 70mm for one.

That earth to scale image is really useful by the way!

[Rusted]

Nicely done!

[maw lod qan]

I like having the Earth there to help get the scale working in the grey matter.

For something so special, we and our world aren't much to notice in the grand scheme of things. Are we?