Mercury transit from Wales

[Helen]

So something rare happened today.... the Welsh weather cooperated for a special event 😊  (OK it was very cold, very windy, there was some cloud and some spots of rain, but that's being picky 😉 )

The forecast suggested sunshine and clouds were likely so I decided to stay local.  My garden was a non-starter given the trees and hedges which cut off my southern horizon.  So I headed to a local country park which has a good carpark.  When I arrived it was a bit cloudy, very gusty and so cold - it was also starting to spot with rain!  But the wind meant that the clouds did move quickly, so I decided to stick it out.  I started with the minimum set up though: the borg 71 on the solarquest mount with the solar funnel (it doesn't mind getting wet).  I decided I could just try getting some photos of the projected image with my phone. 

I did manage to see Mercury at the solar edge, but the resolution wasn't really good enough to distinguish between first and second (not helped by the funnel acing like a small sail).  At this point a lady walking her dog  got intrigued at what I was doing - we had a lovely chat 🙂  She'd previously lived in Portugal for 20 years, and so we discussed the relative merits of Wales v Portugal for astronomy (no contest!!).

I enjoyed just watching the transit, chuffed to actually see it!  Then the weather improved a little so decided to give imaging a go.  I put the asi1600mono in a lunt white light diagonal, with a continuum filter and a 2.25 barlow to give better scale and contrast.  Focusing was a little easier too.  I ran some images through until 13:45 (with one more interruption to show some more dog walkers 🙂 ). By this point there was more cloud and I was very cold!! so I decided to pack up.

All in all a very satisfying and fun experience 😎

The processing has been a bit of a challenge this evening... but here is a rough gif (too much movement, and irregular gaps...)

and a few stacks false coloured

Helen

 

[The Admiral]

Nice images Helen. What do you use to stack them with? I took several batches in quick succession for the possibility of stacking, but given the featureless face of the Sun I wasn't sure if it would work.

Strangely some of the images in your post have a mesh-like background, though individually they seem OK. I guess that this is just a moire effect between the dpi of the image and my laptop screen. I get the same effect on my tablet too.

Ian