Transit of Mercury 2016-05-09

The transit of Mercury happened! Luckily I could escape a little bit early on transit day and set up the telescope to catch us a transit. We see that the gear is a fairly basic set up based on a Sky-Watcher ED80 equipped with a neutral density photographic solar filter from Baader Planetarium and a Canon D600.

Although the day was a partially it worked out well with only the smallest bit of patience. Plus, some clouds are nice to have to cool down a little bit. The mount is a Sky-Watcher HEQ5 that, although it warns us never to point the telescope at the sun everytime we turn it on, can be easily set to solar tracking speed.

In the end I got a little bit sunburned and Skrållan, my then 9-week-old boxer puppy, found a bit of shade by the photo bag.

We saw the whole picture at the top of the page with Mercury to the left and a couple of sunspots in the middle. Below we see two 100% close-up cropped frames to get a better look at the details. The difference between sunspots that are irregular and are surrounded by a lighter penumbra, and the silhouette of Mercury that is perfectly (to the limit of the camera) round and smooth is easy to see.