Mercury Solar Transit - from Las Vegas, NV. USA

[SiriusDoggy]

Well, the Mercury transit was a huge success here thanks to the script help I received here from Purgitoria. Thank you so much! If you ever make it out to Las Vegas, reach out and I'll buy you a beer.

I'm still working on the full animation but I've included a couple stills and a link to a very short animation test that I made of 3rd and 4th contact. Here in Las Vegas, the transit was already in mid progress so we missed 1st and 2nd contact. The planet was almost halfway through the transit at sunrise. I started imaging as soon as the sun rose above my neighbor's house at 6:50am but it honestly didn't get steady enough to animate until around 8am. So I have 2 hours worth of images to process and edit. I've figured out a few automation tricks to speed up the process.

This first shot is from around 8am.

This shot was at 9:58am, just 4 minutes from 3rd contact.

 

The animation of 3rd and 4th contact. I haven't composited the edge prominence portion just yet.

Edited November 13, 2019 by SiriusDoggy

[David Smith]

Awesome, look forward to seeing the full animation

[Pete Presland]

Very nicely imaged

[MilwaukeeLion]

Terrific, really like how you processed the second image.

[SiriusDoggy]

3 minutes ago, MilwaukeeLion said:

Terrific, really like how you processed the second image.

Thanks!

[SiriusDoggy]

Here's the complete time-lapse of the transit.

Mercury Transit

 

[carastro]

Excellent, already commented on another forum.

Carole 

[Rusted]

Absolutely stunning results!

[SiriusDoggy]

Thanks guys!

[Swoop1]

Very nice images and video/ animation. Congratulations.

[orion25]

Incredible images and I LOVE the animation! Wow! Thanks for all your effort  

Reggie