Mercury 20th May

[CraigT82]

I spent some time today really getting to grips with processing Mercury data and think this is the best I'm gonna get out of the capture from the 20th. 

I collected 4x50,000 frame videos at approx 300fps, stacked 80,000 of them and sharpened in registax using only the first slider. Then into PS for contrast enhancement, levels adjustment and some unsharp masking and resized to 200%

Presented alongside winjupos simulation for reference. The brightest spot below the equator is Kuiper crater (62km diameter)

8.75" Fullerscope with APM 2.7x Barlow and Altair GPCAM3 290m, Baader IR685nm filter. 

Cheers

Edited May 22, 2020 by CraigT82

[lukebl]

That's a phenomenal capture. I managed to capture Mercury's disc and gibbous phase for the first time ever last night, which was very satisfying, but the seeing was terrible.

Just wondering how you manage to do it! I am having to image it over my roof, so I guess it must the thermals from the tiles after a hot day which make my seeing so bad.

[CraigT82]

1 hour ago, lukebl said:

That's a phenomenal capture. I managed to capture Mercury's disc and gibbous phase for the first time ever last night, which was very satisfying, but the seeing was terrible.

Just wondering how you manage to do it! I am having to image it over my roof, so I guess it must the thermals from the tiles after a hot day which make my seeing so bad.

What time did you capture? Earlier is better when its higher up but its harder to find in the blue sky (and have to take sensible precautions regarding the sun)

[maw lod qan]

Excellent image. I'm tickled when I get a decent image with my trusty Canon doing single frames. 

[lukebl]

15 hours ago, CraigT82 said:

What time did you capture? Earlier is better when its higher up but its harder to find in the blue sky (and have to take sensible precautions regarding the sun)

I have been capturing later (18:30 BST onwards), when the sun has passed behind my roof and the scope is in shade. When it's bathed in sunlight, I've been finding that the turbulence is even worse.

I would have though that the longer tube of your Newt would make it even worse, but clearly not!

[Pete Presland]

Very nice Craig, its a difficult balancing act when processing these images.