Mercury transit of the Sun on Nov 8, 2006
Here is an image of the Mercury transit in h-alpha. I had grand plans of imaging Mercury with the Toucam at fairly high magnification as it entered the sun’s disk. I spent some time figuring out the position relative to the new giant sunspot (which will probably be designated AR10923). Then I got the bright idea of planetary tracking Mercury with the scope. On the monitor it looked about right about 20 - 30 degrees or so below AR 10923. I kept watching, it was 12:12:40 MST and still no Mercury — panic as I should have seen it 20 or 30 seconds earlier! Fortunately, I had set up the A1010 refractor nearby and easily spotted it visually at low power. It took a minute or so to find it and then reset the capture software. The scope had the RA correct but the declination was wrong. I should have known better as I could have easily confirmed North/South.
Equipment was a Solarscope LTD 50mm h-alpha telescope and Phillips Toucam 840. One hundred seconds video at 15 fps. About 1/4 of the frames were removed because of high wind gusts jittering the view.
Below image of Mercury transit of the Sun taken at 12:40pm in white light.
Image taken with Celestron Nexstar11 telescope, Celestron F6.2 focal reducer, and Phillips Toucam 840 webcam. Sky was clear, wind 10-20 mph, turbulence was poor (4/10), temperature was 82°F, transparency very good.
November 8th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
Glad to see that you were able to catch the transit.I had planned on seeing it.I had a great spot picked out and time granted from work.Unfortunately,mother nature decided that we needed rain.It has been raining all day long.Well,their is always 2016!!.